This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Written by Editor, Art Knowledge News Tuesday, 31 January 2012 20:29

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 Kunsthalle of the Hypo Cultural Foundation Hosts First German Retrospective of Georgia O'Keeffe

Written by Ralph Westinghouse Wednesday, 01 February 2012 01:36

Munich, Germany - The Kunsthalle of the Hypo Cultural Foundation is proud to host the first comprehensive retrospective of American artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) in Germany. The exhibition "Georgia O'Keeffe: Life and Works" will be on view from February 3rd through May 13th, and features around 75 paintings, works on paper and sculptures providing an overview of her work. The exhibitions shows all phases of O'Keeffe's work, from her first abstract works of the 1910s, through the paintings of flowers and natural formations from the 1920s followed by the famous New York cityscapes and pictures of Lake George. The vast landscapes of New Mexico, with the typical local architecture and still life, animal skulls form a climax.

Georgia O'Keeffe's work, is generally unknown beyond American shores, a situation for which Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was primarily responsible. As America’s first modernist photographer and its first advocate of modern art, he introduced O’Keeffe’s art to the New York art community in 1916, and he became her dealer that year and her husband in 1924. As the most ardent promoter of her work, he made O’Keeffe’s art accessible to New Yorkers with the annual exhibitions of it that he organized from 1923 until his death in 1946. By 1929, his promotional efforts had realized sales that made O’Keeffe a millionaire in today’s money, which provided her complete financial security. In the beginning decades of the twentieth century, Stieglitz resented the fact that American art was not regarded with the same degree of importance as that of the Europeans. He became committed to the then revolutionary idea that American artists could create an art indigenous to America that would be valued with the same acclaim as that of the European masters. As a result, he refused to send the work of any of the artists he supported to exhibitions outside of the United States: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Paul Strand, feeling that if people wanted to see American art, they should come to America. Thus, these artists works were and remain little known outside of the United States. O’Keeffe works are currently in several European collections as a result of recent gifts from The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, which dissolved in 2006. Also, in the last ten years, exhibitions of O’Keeffe’s work have taken place in England, Spain, and Switzerland. But none has been presented in either Germany or Italy.  This retrospective exhibition will thus be the first to acquaint these European audiences with O’Keeffe’s extraordinary works.


The exhibition will be made up primarily of work from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum collection, which houses more than half of the artist’s entire output, with a few works from other American and European collections.  Examples of O’Keefe’s work in charcoal, watercolor, oil, and her sculptures will represent her creative efforts in each of these media. Moreover, selections of works from each decade in the seventy years she was active as an artist (1915-1984) will provide an overview of the kinds of subjects that interested her, from her abstractions of the 1910s, to her innovative and famous large-scale paintings of the 1920s, which include flowers, other natural forms, as well as New York city pictures. The show will also include works from the decades O’Keeffe worked in both New York and New Mexico, 1929 to 1949, when she made the area her permanent home), such as the many landscape and architectural forms she produced in both places, as well as her famous paintings of subjects specific to New Mexico: architecture, bones, skulls, and paintings of its highly colored and dramatic landscape configurations. In addition, the exhibition will include works she produced after moving to New Mexico in 1949 as well as those that were inspired by her travels beyond American shores that began in 1951. Indeed, she travelled extensively, making several trips around the world, until the early 1980s, when illness made it impossible for her to travel. The exhibition will also present photographs of O’Keeffe made by Stieglitz, who photographed her from 1917 until the mid-1930s, when he put his camera down. Other photographs of O’Keeffe that date from both before and after Stieglitz’s death will be on view, such as images by Ansel Adams, Todd Webb, Andy Warhol, Don Worth, to name only a few. These photographs document two public images of O’Keeffe created through photography, a sexualized provocative O’Keeffe, which was the creation of Stieglitz beginning in the 1910s and the self-determined, serious, and uncompromising image that O’Keeffe created of herself from the 1920s to the end of her life.


The Kunsthalle in Munich is the most important and best-known institution of the Hypo Cultural Foundation. The exhibition house is located in a pedestrian zone of the Theatinerstraße located in the center of downtown. Since opening in 1985 it has hosted over 80 exhibitions. In 2001 a major expansion, designed by renowned Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron was built in the area of the "Five Houses". The Kunsthalle now has some 1,200 m² of exhibition space with modern museum technology. The exhibition program is famed for its high quality and diverse subjects. The spectrum ranges from the pre-and early history (5000 BC) to the immediate present. Broader areas of art, such as prehistoric, non-European and inter-disciplinary issues are regularly exhibited, most recently with "Royal Tombs of the Scythians". However, at the heart of the programme are the art exhibitions, ranging from old masters, such as "Venice - Paintings of the 18th Century", "Madame de Pompadour", "Italian Still Life" and "Frans Hals and Haarlem master of golden age", to the modern classics, including Marc Chagall, Paul Gauguin, Alberto Giacometti, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Rene Magritte, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Emile Nolde, Pablo Picasso and Mark Rothko. The most successful exhibition in recent years was "Claude Monet and Modernism" (with 237,000 visitors). The Kunsthalle has an average of more than 300,000 visitors a year, and nearly 7 million art lovers have visited since its opening in 1985. Visit the Kunsthalle's website at ... http://www.hypo-kunsthalle.de

VIP Art Fair to Bring the Best Galleries and Artists to a Computer Screen Near You

Written by Florence McDougall Wednesday, 01 February 2012 00:02

New York City.- VIP Art Fair, the world’s first contemporary art fair held exclusively online, will return with its second fair between February 3rd and February 8th 2012. Top international galleries will offer artworks starting from around $500 to over $1 million. Launched in January 2011, VIP Art Fair leverages international technology to create a live, online marketplace to view, learn about and purchase artworks by leading artists from around the world. Fair Director Noah Horowitz explains, "VIP takes the successful model of physical art fairs and opens it to a much broader audience, empowering the connection between the engaged art community and the world's most prominent dealers. Work from over 2,000 artists will be on view through presentations by 115 carefully selected galleries invited to participate. VIP connects all audiences in real time to experience the art works and share what they’ve seen. Scale has no bounds in the VIP Art Fair as  galleries can present intimate drawings to giant museum scale works in their booth, allowing art  enthusiasts from more than 30 countries to view them in larger than life resolution.

Exhibiting galleries will present work in three carefully selected areas, alongside curated visitor tours, a Museums and Editions Hall, and artist and collector video series. VIP’s recent appointment of e-commerce expert, Lisa Kennedy, shows their dedication to  understanding and investing in our ever developing relationship with the net, and the access to the  art world online. With an impeccable record of more than 15 years of leadership and innovation in  Internet Commerce and Media, Kennedy was most recently Executive Vice President at Quidsi Inc,  where she was responsible for growing revenues nearly tenfold from $30M, culminating in an  acquisition by Amazon for $540M.  Building on last year’s platform, Social media integration with Twitter and Facebook invites visitors  to share their favourite items and personalised tours with others on and beyond the site. VIP2.0  supports all web-browsers, iPad and mobile devices. The company’s new VP of Engineering, Severin Andrieu-Delille, states, "At our inaugural fair, systems struggled with high traffic volume and the site experienced technical issues. In response, we've completed major upgrades, adding substantial  server and bandwidth resources. Significant load testing makes us confident we’ll meet peak  demand, delivering a flawless, content?rich experience for our exhibitors and visitors.” Increasingly, art fairs are changing the way in which art is sold. Demographics from the inaugural fair show that there is a proven platform for galleries to interact with their clients in the digital pace; the week-long event drew an audience of over 40,000 visitors from 196 countries who spent more than an hour on the site viewing over 200 unique artworks.


Galleries already participating in the 2012 fair include; Alexander and Bonin (New York), Peter Blum Gallery (New York), James Cohan Gallery (New York & Shanghai), Galleria Continua (San Gimignano, Beijing & Le Moulin), Corkin Gallery (Toronto), Alan Cristea Gallery (London), Galerie Eigen + Art (Leipzig & Berlin), Fraenkel Gallery (San Francisco), Stephen Friedman Gallery (London), Gagosian Gallery (New York, Beverly Hills, London, Rome, Paris, Geneva, Hong Kong & Athens), Galerie Gmurzynska (Zurich, St. Moritz & Zug), Marian Goodman Gallery (New York & Paris), Hauser & Wirth (Zurich, London & New York), Leila Heller Gallery (New York), Galerie Max Hetzler (Berlin), Xavier Hufkens (Brussels), Gallery Hyundai (Seoul), Galerie Krinzinger (Vienna), Yvon Lambert (Paris), Galerie Lelong (New York & Paris), Luhring Augustine New York), Victoria Miro (London), Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (Sydney), The Pace Gallery (New York & Beijing), Pace Prints (New York), Pace/MacGill Gallery (New York), Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (Paris & Salzburg), ShanghART (Shanghai & Beijing), White Cube (London), David Zwirner (New York), Brooke Alexander Gallery (New York), Galeria Raquel Arnaud (São Paulo), ARNDT (Berlin), Bernier/Eliades (Athens), Barbara Krakow Gallery (Boston), Galería Elba Benítez (Madrid), Marianne Boesky (New York), Ben Brown Fine Arts (London & Hong Kong), Chemould Prescott Road (Mumbai), Dirimart (Istanbul), Fortes Vilaça (São Paulo), Galeria Filomena Soares (Lisbon), Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg & Cape Town), Greenberg Van Doren Gallery (New York & St. Louis), The Guild (Mumbai), Haines Gallery (San Francisco), i8 (Reykjavik), John Berggruen Gallery (San Francisco), John Szoke Editions (New York), Paul Kasmin Gallery (New York), Lehmann Maupin Gallery (New York), Leo Castelli Gallery (New York), Lombard Freid Projects (New York), Luis Adelantado (Mexico City & Valencia), Galerie Urs Meile (Beijing & Lucerne), Moeller Fine Art Ltd (New York & Berlin), Galerie Nathalie Obadia (Paris & Brussels), Ota Fine Arts (Tokyo), Pékin Fine Arts (Beijing), Galeria Nara Roesler (São Paulo), Anna Schwartz Gallery (Melbourne & Sydney), Galeria Luisa Strina (São Paulo), Galerie Daniel Templon (Paris), Galerie Thomas Modern (Munich), Tucci Russo (Turin), Van de Weghe Fine Art (New York), Bischoff/Weiss (London), Casa Triângulo (São Paulo), Elizabeth Dee Gallery (New York).


As well as the private sector galleries, a number of museum will be offering prints and multiples during the event. these include the Barbican Art Gallery (London), Eikon (Vienna), The Fruitmarket Gallery (Edinburgh), Independent Curators International (New York), Parkett (New York & Zurich), The Renaissance Society (Chicago), Rhizome (New York), Serpentine Gallery (London), Texte zur Kunst (Berlin), Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing) and Whitechapel Gallery (London). Visit the fair's website at ... http://www.vipartfair.com

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Honors Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

Written by Corinne Poldergrist Tuesday, 31 January 2012 20:53

Santa Fe, New Mexico.- The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is pleased to honor Jaune Quick-to-See Smith as a Living Artist of Distinction, and is presenting the exhibition "Jaune Quick-To-See Smith: Landscapes of an American Modernist" through April 29th. Smith is an enrolled Sqelix'u (Salish) member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation and is one of the best-known Native America artists of the late twentieth century. Smith distinguishes herself as a modernist in both her pursuit of abstraction and her expressive technique in oil paint, pastel, and printmaking. The Living Artists of Distinction series began in 2000 to fulfill an important part of the museum’s mission to define the “ongoing significance” of Georgia O’Keeffe’s legacy.

Artists are selected for this honor because their work expresses the modernist principles that O’Keeffe and other members of the Alfred Stieglitz circle espoused in the first decades of the twentieth century, and because they have achieved positions of prominence in American art. Smith, who has lived and worked in New Mexico since 1976, is the first Native American artist to be recognized in the series. Like Georgia O’Keeffe, Smith embraced her new environment and began painting landscapes that express a deeply personal sense of place and connection to the land of New Mexico. But while O’Keeffe focused her attention on the timeless uninhabited landscapes of her adopted home, Smith’s “inhabited landscapes” express the human conflict marked on the land. The exhibition will focus on Smith’s inhabited landscapes, in which she joins modernist color and techniques with her unique visual vocabulary of figures. Describing her artistic strategy, Smith explains, “My life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.”


Carolyn Kastner, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Associate Curator, has organized this exhibition to include both oil paintings and works on paper from two of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s most powerful series. She says, “Smith contributes to American modernism by drawing upon her complex cultural heritage—both Native and non-Native—to expand the definitions of ‘American’ and ‘modernist’ art.” Smith began the Petroglyph Park Series just five years after she earned her MA in art from the University of New Mexico. The series visualizes the contested lands along the Río Grande River, west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The intensely worked oil paintings were created by Smith between 1985 and 1987, when the ancient petroglyphs on the steep volcanic cliffs, near the artist’s home, were threatened by a suburban housing development. The series established Smith’s artistic voice in the lineage of American landscape painting. Her brilliant color, compositional style, and gestural layers of paint, ground Smith’s painting in modern abstraction, even as she extends the tradition with her unique visual vocabulary of plants, animals and humans.

By 1989, Smith began to work in a postmodern technique using found materials, text, and images in a series named for Chief Seattle, whose eloquent speech of 1854 is still remembered as an ecological prophecy. Seattle’s words invoke the spirit of the land and its inseparability from its inhabitants. Smith’s pastels from that period create a sense of urgency with beautiful but threatening images of the polluted landscape of the late twentieth century. Like Georgia O’Keeffe, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s personal and passionate attachment to New Mexico has transformed American art and our vision of the landscape. “This exhibition is the first of many upcoming exhibitions to recognize the diverse expressions of Modernism. We are proud to include the work of Hopi artists Ramona Sakiestewa and Dan Namingha in our exhibition Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land, which will open in 2013. We will be showing their abstract artwork, inspired by Hopi Katsinam, with O’Keeffe’s paintings and drawings of Hopi katsina tithu (katsina dolls),” says Kastner.


The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, opened to the public in July 1997, eleven years after the death of the artist from whom it takes its name. Welcoming more than 2,225,000 visitors from all over the world and being the most visited art museum in the state of New Mexico, it is the only museum in the world dedicated to an internationally known American woman artist. One of the most significant artists of the 20th century, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was devoted to creating imagery that expressed what she called “the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it.” She was a leading member of the Stieglitz Circle artists, headed by Alfred Stieglitz, America’s first advocate of modern art in America. These avant-garde artists began to flourish in New York in the 1910s. O’Keeffe’s images—instantly recognizable as her own —include abstractions, large-scale depictions of flowers, leaves, rocks, shells, bones and other natural forms, New York cityscapes and paintings of the unusual shapes and colors of architectural and landscape forms of northern New Mexico. The Museum’s collection of over 3,000 works comprises 1,149 O’Keeffe paintings, drawings, and sculptures that date from 1901 to 1984, the year failing eyesight forced O’Keeffe into retirement. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is the largest single repository of O'Keeffe's work in the world. Throughout the year, visitors can see a changing selection of these works. In addition, the Museum presents special exhibitions that are either devoted entirely to O’Keeffe’s work or combine examples of her art with works by her American modernist contemporaries.  The Museum also organizes exhibitions of works by her contemporaries, as well as by living artists of distinction.

Over 140 artists other than O’Keeffe have been exhibited at the Museum, such as Arthur Dove, Sherrie Levine, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center opened in July 2001 as a component of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. As the only museum-related research facility in the world dedicated to the study of American Modernism (late nineteenth century – present), it sponsors research in the fields of art history, architectural history and design, literature, music and photography.  Its annual, competitive stipend program awards six stipends to qualified applicants who can spend three to twelve months at the Research Center, which makes its library, collections and unique archives accessible to researchers worldwide as well as to its in-house scholars. The Museum and its Research Center are both Pueblo Revival-style buildings located two blocks from the historic Santa Fe Plaza and were renovated in 1997 and 2001, respectively, by Gluckman Mayner Architects, New York. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/

Art from the Collections of "la Caixa" Foundation and MACBA on view at the Guggenheim

Written by Bernardo Guzman Tuesday, 31 January 2012 20:54

BILBAO, SPAIN - From January 31st to September 2nd, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao will be hosting The Inverted Mirror: Art from the Collections of ”la Caixa” Foundation and MACBA, a superb selection of works belonging to two outstanding contemporary art collections that represent the most significant tendencies and movements spanning the second half of the twentieth century to the present, such as Dau al Set, the El Paso group, the Vancouver School and the Dusseldorf School. Throughout the Museum’s third floor, The Inverted Mirror offers visitors a tour of 93 works by 52 artists who worked with various media, especially photography, video and large-format sculpture. The exhibition is structured around the points of agreement and divergence between the Fundación "la Caixa" and MACBA collections and highlights the art movements that play an outstanding role in both collections, such as the beginning of Art Informel in Spain and the establishment of objectivity as a current in contemporary photography.

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Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Written by Editor, Art Knowledge News Monday, 30 January 2012 22:29

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.

Merry Karnowsky Gallery to Feature New Work in A Group Show

Written by Felicity Mumblethorn Tuesday, 31 January 2012 01:41

Los Angeles.- The Merry Karnowsky Gallery is proud to present "New Work by Tara McPherson, Deedee Cheriel, Lindsey Way & Aiko" on view at the gallery from February 4th through March 3rd. While all the artists are working in their unique styles and mediums there is a parallel lyrical motif. Tara Mcpherson is an artist based out of New York City. Named the crown princess of poster art by ELLE Magazine, she has created numerous gig posters for rock bands such as Beck, Modest Mouse, and Melvins. Creating art about people and their odd ways, her characters seem to exude an idealized innocence with a glimpse of hard earned wisdom in their eyes. Recalling many issues from childhood and good old life experience, she creates images that are thought provoking and seductive. Her new work displays a focus on sensual female portraiture, aiming at capturing an essence of a woman, and spanning through seasonal changes. These portraits capture an idealized moment in time with subtle aspects of a persona conveyed in a single expression.

Deedee Cheriel's work demonstrates a powerful tension between the design elements of stripes, patterns, and color fields, with lyrical illustration. – Shepard Fairey. Growing up skateboarding and playing in bands in the Pacific Northwest, Deedee Cheriel’s iconic work is both graphic and painterly and borrows from her Indian heritage. Her current body of work references Indian ritual art: attempting to invoke deities, exorcise negative forces, celebrate rites of passage, and mark turning points in death and renewal. Drawing upon nature and her trademark hybrid animal-people as subjects, Deedee creates dark and meditative narratives. Lindsey Way was born in Dunoon, Scotland. She attended Pratt Institute, where she studied fine art and illustration. She then worked as a window display artist throughout New York City, assisted the prolific painter Ron English and toured the globe playing bass for the band Mindless Self Indulgence.


Her work has been in CBGB's 32nd Anniversary Art Show, "Hung" and the traveling group show, "Draw". In 2010 she displayed 13 dioramas called, "Hush" in a two women show entitled "Smile Even if it Hurts", was chosen to be one of the artists to participate in South Park's 15th Anniversary art exhibition curated by Ron English, and was featured in Longan Hick's show "Pretty Ugly" at New York's Opera Gallery. Lindsey's current body of work is a collection of dioramas entitled "The Flu" a dark, nautical, viral take over depicting victims and survivors.

Aiko, always expressing a dichotomy between true love and the dark melancholic flipside, returns with a personal theme and show title of "After a Long Time". Perhaps since the beginning or end of a long tumultuous relationship, or perhaps reflective of a creative burgeoning. Aiko’s new paintings are scattered with beautiful images of memory and passion. Her current body of work will showcase a mixture of installation and stencil based paintings reminiscent of her childhood in Japan, and international street art practice.


The Merry Karnowsky Gallery is devoted to exhibiting contemporary works of art that are challenging, innovative and committed to fostering new directions in American art. With a creative stable that is one of the most significantly sought after both nationally and internationally, the gallery has become one of Los Angeles’ premier insurrectionary art venues. In March of 2008, Karnowsky opened a second gallery in the Mitte district of Berlin, Germany, committed to bringing fresh, innovative works to the burgeoning Berlin art scene. Articles about the gallery, and/or it's artists have been featured in Juxtapoz, Swindle, Flaunt, Paper, Nylon, The Face, Variety, Giant Robot, Super X Media, Art Week, Art Issues, Flash Art, Modern Painters, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, The LA Weekly, and The Los Angeles Times. MKG Gallery artists have been included in group and solo Museum exhibitions at The Grand Central Art Center, The Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, The Cincinnati Art Center, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, MOCA Miami, The San Jose Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Visit the gallery's website at ... www.mkgallery.com/

The Ashmolean To Display Indian Paintings from the Howard Hodgkin Collection

Written by Humphrey Bickerton Monday, 30 January 2012 22:54

Oxford, England.- The Ashmolean Museum is proud to present "Visions of Mughal India: The Collection of Howard Hodgkin", on view at the museum from February 2nd through April 22nd. Howard Hodgkin has been a passionate collector of Indian paintings since his school days and his collection has long been considered one of the finest of its kind in the world. At times he has devoted almost as much effort to developing his collection as to his own work as a painter. It will go on show at the Ashmolean for the first time in its entirety. The collection comprises most of the main types of Indian court painting that flourished during the Mughal period (c. 1550–1850), including the refined naturalistic works of the imperial Mughal court; the poetic and subtly coloured paintings of the Deccani Sultanates; and the boldly drawn and vibrantly coloured xxstyles of the Rajput kingdoms of Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills.

Above all, this is a personal collection, formed by an artist’s eye. Artistic quality has always mattered most to Hodgkin – the narrative content and other aspects of paintings far less.  All his Indian pictures are of an unusual or exceptional quality. They include illustrations of epics and myths, royal portraits and many scenes of court life or hunting scenes. There is a large and outstanding group of elephant portraits and studies of the Mughal and Kota schools. Some of the works in the collection vividly evoke the urban or daily life of India, a country which has inspired Hodgkin on his frequent visits made over some 50 years. There is also great diversity in these pictures, some containing exciting passages or juxtapositions of colour, as can also be found in Hodgkin’s own work. But many others are lightly coloured brush drawings which show an expressive mastery of line. A large part of Hodgkin’s collection has been on long-term loan to the Ashmolean for the last ten years and selected pictures have been shown in the Museum’s Indian galleries. Others have been lent by Howard Hodgkin especially for this exhibition. Many of the works which will be shown have never been exhibited to the public before. "My collection has been seen before in an incomplete form but it’s since grown considerably. Now I’m struck all over again by its quality... I never bought paintings or drawings on the tempting but distracting basis of their topography, their school of art, their theme, period or style. I just wanted great art" said Howard Hodgkin.

Founded in 1683, the Ashmolean Museum is the most significant museum of art and archaeology in the heart of Britain, and the finest university museum in the world.  Its collections are large, rich and unusually diverse, ranging from archaeology to fine and decorative arts, and from numismatics to casts of classical sculpture from the  great museums of Europe. The Ashmolean is home to the best collection of Predynastic Egyptian material in Europe; the only great collection of Minoan antiquities outside Greece; the largest and most important group of Raphael drawings in the world; the greatest Anglo-Saxon collections outside the British Museum; a world-renowned collection of coins and medals; and outstanding displays of Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Islamic art. The works and objects in these remarkable collections tell the story of civilisation and the aspirations of mankind from Nineveh and ancient Egypt, to the Renaissance, right up to the triumphs of twentieth century Europe. Visitors are welcome to The Jameel Centre to view the Ashmolean’s study collections of Eastern Art. The Eastern Art collections comprise over 30,000 objects spanning 5,000 years. They include ceramics, textiles, sculpture, metalwork, paintings, prints, and other decorative arts from the Islamic  world, South and South-East Asia, China, Japan, and Korea. Highlights of the collection include the world’s foremost collection of modern Chinese art; Japanese art of the Meiji period; Islamic ceramics, embroideries and textile fragments; and Indian, Tibetan and South-East Asian sculptures. Launched in February 2010, The Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art, provides online access to the Ashmolean Museum's Eastern Art department collections. As part of the University of Oxford, the collections hold particular value for teaching and research, but they also appeal to visitors who may not be as familiar with the material. This project aims to open up the collections and enable everyone to find what they are interested in; whether for research, artistic inspiration or general curiosity. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.ashmolean.org/