Zondag 20 september vindt op de Albert Cuypmarkt de KunstCuyp plaats

Op zondag 20 september vindt voor de vijfde achtereenvolgende keer op de Albert Cuypmarkt de KunstCuyp plaats. Deze ‘laagdrempelige kunstmarkt van hoog niveau’, maakt onderdeel uit van het jaarlijkse Nazomerfestival, met onder meer een participatiemarkt, een proeverij, buurtbrunch, kinderactiviteiten, straattheater, dans en veel live muziek. De algemene coördinatie is in handen van het wijkcentrum Ceintuur in De Pijp.

Wat heeft de Kunst&CultuurCuyp te bieden? Tientallen stands in de vorm van marktkramen op de plek waar dagelijks de Albert Cuyp markt wordt gehouden. Op een stand kunt u uw kunstwerken te koop aanbieden, interesse opwekken voor een project waar u aan werkt, een speciaal voor de gelegenheid ontworpen project uitvoeren, etcetera. Op de diverse terrassen kunnen bezoekers even uitpuffen en genieten van muziek- en theateroptredens.

Prix d’Albert. De best verzorgde en/of meest origineel ingerichte kraam ontvangt de jaarlijkse Prix d’Albert, bestaande uit een solotentoonstelling in wijkcentrum Ceintuur met begeleidende publicatie in De Pijp Krant. De stands worden beoordeeld door een deskundige jury.

Voor wie is de Kunst&CultuurCuyp bedoeld? Professionele beeldend kunstenaars uit alle disciplines worden uitgenodigd zich in te schrijven. De KunstCuyp werkt dit jaar voor de tweede keer samen met ‘Open Ateliers De Pijp’ dat op 3 en 4 oktober plaats vindt. Deelnemers aan die route roepen wij specifiek op zich voor de KunstCuyp in te schrijven, zodat tevens een representatief voorproefje van de route kan ontstaan. Een stand van de organisatie van de route zal extra aandacht aan dit evenement schenken.

Speerpunt: Het Nazomerfestival werkt dit jaar aan het thema duurzaamheid. U als mogelijke deelnemer aan het festival roepen we op om na te denken over dit thema en het op enigerlei wijze weer te geven in uw stand.

Publiciteit. Het programma van de KunstCuyp wordt gepubliceerd in De Pijpkrant, die voorafgaand aan de KunstCuyp in een oplage van 15.000 huis aan huis in De Pijp bezorgd wordt. De website www.nazomerfestival-depijp.nl bevat het programma en onder meer gegevens van de deelnemende kunstenaars (afbeelding, kort statement en een link naar een website naar keuze). De organisatie verspreidt persberichten, aankondigingen in de vorm van posters en flyers en realiseert free publicity.


Grotere kaart weergeven

PLOT is a new public art quadrennial, produced and presented by Creative Time.

Judi Werthein

To create La Tierra de los Libres, Judi Werthein chose to collaborate with itinerant agricultural workers from Colombia's Pacific Coast who were driven to inland cities by conflict surrounding the drug trade. To make a living in their new, urban environment, this group drew on a cultural tradition of singing while they worked and began performing in local restaurants and bars. Werthein gave the musicians a literal Spanish translation of The Star-Spangled Banner and asked them to play the song in their own style.

PLOT is a new public art quadrennial, produced and presented by Creative Time. This World & Nearer Ones is the first edition of PLOT, and will be held this summer on Governors Island. 19 artworks by international contemporary artists will be presented. The exhibition is free and open to the public Friday-Sunday.

Featuring work by Edgar Arceneaux, AA Bronson and Peter Hobbs, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Adam Chodzko, Tue Greenfort, Jill Magid, Teresa Margolles, Anthony McCall, Nils Norman, Susan Philipsz, Patti Smith and Jesse Smith, Tercerunquinto, Tris Vonna-Michell, Mark Wallinger, Klaus Weber, Lawrence Weiner, Judi Werthein, Guido van der Werve, and Krzysztof Wodiczko. Curated by Mark Beasley.

Curatorial Statement (Excerpt)
It could be stated that many of the works of This World & Nearer Ones seem enveloped in a pall of darkness, to be read either as a persistence of the irrational and the obscure or a reflection of the spirit of the age. It was the Impressionists that chose to employ dark mirrors, in order to refresh their eyes and see color anew; to stare into dark glass before turning back again to the world. This, then, is the exhibition as dark mirror. It seeks, through materially slight and ephemeral means, to present works that eschew the spectacular and absolute and, employing more than a little dark humour, invite open speculation. Avoiding easy succour—there is no vividly coloured, lime green, depression-era glass by which to forget oneself—the artists present a world in which certainty and the future are in question. For certainty without critical thought has been the crowning tragedy of the age. What we are being asked to consider is the sureness of our beliefs, from the invocation of spirits both scientific and ritually summoned; fictional architecture and neo-liberal urban planning; the ghosts of counterculture and culturally-sanctioned agit-prop to the spoken testimony of army veterans and science fiction narratives. It, as with the island, is in a state of becoming, caught between worlds and open to all, a moment to consider without fixity the times in which we live.
Mark Beasley, May, 2009
http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2009/plot09/artworks.php

Knights and Hunters: Ken Garduno, Jason Hernandez, Michael Hsiung and Sam Saghatelian

Knights and Hunters: Ken Garduno, Jason Hernandez, Michael Hsiung and Sam Saghatelian

13 June – 11 July, 2009

Los Angeles – Black Maria Gallery announced “Knights and Hunters,” a new group exhibition that will open on Saturday, June 13, at 7 PM. The show will feature new drawings and paintings by Los Angeles artists Ken Garduno, Jason Hernandez, Michael C. Hsiung and Sam Saghatelian.

The exhibited works share a common theme in that they explore the complex interconnectedness of chivalry and machismo, according to Zara Zeitountsian, the director of Black Maria Gallery.

“Against the backdrop of gender politics, the ever-evolving roles of men and women, and particularly the cultural underpinnings that inform tradition and change, the ‘Knights and Hunters’ exhibition examines our understanding of what could be described as the gentleman’s ethos on the one hand, and the Don Juan complex on the other,” Zeitountsian explained.

“As the works included in the exhibition shed light on the many ironies of what it might mean to be a man in the contemporary world, they reveal the comical, the shocking and not-so-shocking, and sometimes the downright grotesque,” Saghatelian continued. “So it is that many of the works are tongue-in-cheek and unabashedly over the top. But perhaps the most important thread running through these works is that of a certain loving curiosity, and ultimately an insistence on pointing at a common humanity beyond the politics and stereotypes.”

Foundry to Finish: The Making of a Bronze Sculpture

In a process still relatively unchanged from Adriaen de Vries' time, "Juggling Man" is replicated in the direct lost-wax method. A foundry worker scoops slag from molten bronze.

Foundry to Finish: The Making of a Bronze Sculpture June 23 - July 11 2010 at The Getty Center

http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/foundry_finish/index.html?cid=egetty093

Dutch artist Adriaen De Vries became renowned in his lifetime for the innovative compositions and technical virtuosity of his bronze sculpture. He made Juggling Man around 1610, at a time when technical innovations in casting would have offered a safer approach than the method he chose.

De Vries practiced the more traditional direct lost-wax approach, in which the original model sculpted of clay and wax becomes encased in a mold. If the artist ran into a problem during the next stage of casting with molten bronze, he would have had to start the creative process all over again. The model would have been destroyed.

This exhibition and accompanying photographs and videos demonstrate the process of bronze casting as de Vries practiced it for Juggling Man. It is explained in three stages: modeling, casting, and finishing. Read all, modelling, casting, finishing and more...http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/foundry_finish/index.html?cid=egetty093

MOMA presents James Ensor

James Ensor (Belgian, 1860–1949), The Intrigue. 1890. Oil on canvas, 35 7/16 x 59 1/16" (90 x 150 cm) Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SABAM, Brussels.

MOMA presents James Ensor
June 28, 2009–September 21, 2009

James Ensor (1860–1949) was a major figure in the Belgian avant-garde of the late nineteenth century and an important precursor to the development of Expressionism in the early twentieth. In both respects he has influenced generations of later artists. This exhibition presents approximately 120 works, examining Ensor's contribution to modernity, his innovative and allegorical use of light, his prominent use of satire, his deep interest in carnival and performance, and his own self-fashioning and use of masking, travesty, and role-playing. Examples of Ensor's paintings, prints, and drawings are installed in an overlapping network of themes and images to produce a complete picture of this daring, experiential body of work. Ultimately, this exhibition presents James Ensor as a socially engaged and self-critical artist involved with the issues of his times and with contemporary debates on the very nature of modernism. The exhibition, which is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, will travel to the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, October 2009–February 2010.

James Ensor (Belgian, 1860–1949), The Intrigue. 1890. Oil on canvas, 35 7/16 x 59 1/16" (90 x 150 cm) Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SABAM, Brussels.

Employing Art Along With Ambassadors

Sol Lewitt's Wall Drawing #1256: Five Pointed Stars was installed in Berlin in 2008.

Photo: Werner Huthmacher

Arts / Art & Design
Employing Art Along With Ambassadors
By PATRICIA COHEN Published: June 27, 2009 (New York Times Pernmalink)
Hundreds of prominent and accomplished artists have either donated or been commissioned to create art for the scores of new American embassies, consulates and residences worldwide.

Richard Long at Tate Britain

‘A Line in Scotland’, a sculpture by Richard Long

Richard Long at Tate Britain

(Source Financial Times,Visual Arts) Landscape as a site for artistic pleasure began in the late Middle Ages, reached its apogee with the romantics – Constable, Turner, Caspar David Friedrich – and petered out with the end of modernism. It was alien to classical civilisation and is anathema to most contemporary art. So the great revelation of Richard Long’s retrospective at Tate Britain is that here is an artist who, since the 1960s, has been quietly, radically reclaiming landscape as a source of delight, both sensual and intellectual.
This is a sweeping, joyful, dramatically alive show. Long’s seminal idea – that walking became art when he said it was – is demonstrated in different ways: slate circles arranged on specific sites or imported into the gallery; sticks or stones marking intervals on a walk; photographs; text pieces noting times, places and thoughts on his journeys. The idea gains seriousness, credence, occasionally humour, from the repetition and variety of its manifestations. And even if you leave, as I did, unconvinced by every element, the show coheres room by room into a persuasive exploration of man’s relationship with and place in the abstract entity we call nature.

“Heaven” and “Earth”, the mud-and-water frescoes opening the show and providing its title, evoke both the visceral, spontaneous primitivism of cave-painting and a highly ordered vocabulary of abstraction. Derived from ancient Chinese symbols, Long’s marks include signs for mountains, river, wind, tranquillity. “Heaven” is based on six solid lines; “Earth” on six broken ones, denoting the basic sky/earth, cerebral/physical duality at the heart of his work. It is a delicately rendered metaphysical piece, answered by the concluding work, a wall painting in Cornish china clay which, Long says, “represents the force of my hand speed, and the forces of water, chance and gravity”. The clay courses down like summer rain, shaping patterns that suggest cosmic variety, life-giving energy, lyrical affirmation.

Both pieces are rooted in the personal and gestural, with the mud in “Heaven” and “Earth” coming from the Avon in Long’s native Bristol. Throughout the show, the city’s contours of oozing river, mud banks, spring tides, caves, limestone cliffs, together with the flat expanse of nearby Dartmoor, leave an imprint on Long’s work that is as pronounced as Suffolk’s Stour is on Constable. A photograph of a Somerset beach, a text work denoting “A Straight Northward Walk Across Dartmoor”, an Exmoor Ordnance Survey map marked with the route of “A Ten Mile Walk”, as well as photographs recording treks across treeless plateaus in the Alaskan tundra, the Mongolian steppes, the Argentine pampas – all echo or reference these landscapes of Long’s childhood.

Standing out radiantly from them all is “A Line Made By Walking”. In 1967, aged 22, Long took a train from London’s Waterloo, got off at the first station in open countryside, found a field, walked back and forth until he had made a flattened line, waited for sunlight, took a photograph and went home. The rough, grainy image of that sunbeamed line is direct, luminous, mysterious, but also earthy, heavy with the weight of feet trampling grass. Read Article...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e10c617c-61de-11de-9e03-00144feabdc0.html

‘Richard Long, Heaven and Earth’, Tate Britain, London, to September 6. www.tate.org

Futurism in Tate Modern

Luigi Russolo
The Revolt 1911
Collection: Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague © The Estate of Luigi Russolo

Futurism in Tate Modern
Exhibition 12 June - 20 September 2009

Tate Modern celebrates the centenary of this dramatic art movement with a ground-breaking exhibition. Futurism was launched by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909 with the publication of the Manifesto of Futurism on the front page of Paris newspaper Le Figaro. Drawing upon elements of Divisionism and Cubism, the Futurists created a new style that broke with old traditions and expressed the dynamism, energy and movement of their modern life.

This exhibition both showcases the work of key Futurists such as Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini and explores art movements reacting to Futurism. Highlights include Boccioni's dynamic bronze Unique Forms of Continuity in Space 1913 and Picasso's Head of a Woman (Fernande) 1909 as well as major works by artists such as Braque, Malevich and Duchamp.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/futurism/default.shtm

Luigi Russolo
The Revolt 1911
Collection: Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague © The Estate of Luigi Russolo

Vivons-nous une belle époque ?

Réception des maires à l’Elysée en 1900… le siècle commençait bien. Peut-on dire la même chose bientôt dix ans après ?

25 juin 2009
26 juin 1909 : Vivons-nous une belle époque ?

(Source: Le Monde Blog) « Je suis persuadé que le XXème siècle verra luire un peu plus de fraternité et moins de misère » s’exclamait l’ancien Président de la république Loubet au moment d’inaugurer l’Exposition universelle et de commencer le siècle.
L’activité économique est effectivement repartie, réduisant les écarts de richesse, donnant plus de travail à tous.
Les foules se passionnent pour les progrès en matière de transport : les automobiles plus rapides, les aéroplanes qui volent plus loin et plus haut.
La République, même fatiguée, paraît indestructible. Aucun roi, aucun Bonaparte ne la menace. Elle dispense ses bienfaits sur les colonies qui ne cessent de s’agrandir.
Les Français savent lire, écrire, compter, comme en témoignent les informations transmises par le ministère de la guerre sur les appelés du service militaire.
Nos pourrions donc croire que nous vivons une époque heureuse, une belle époque.

D’où vient donc ce climat social qui s’alourdit ? Les postiers, les cheminots, les enseignants, les mineurs, les vignerons, les carriers, protestent tour à tour et souvent violemment. Il faut souvent la troupe pour ramener le calme.
D’où vient cette volonté de contestation des artistes ? Le cubisme, la recherche de formes nouvelles et incompréhensibles par le grand public, le rejet des académies et des salons officiels sont le signe d’un bouillonnement des idées neuves, d’un refus de la société telle qu’elle est.
A nos frontières, nous entendons parfois le cliquetis des armes que l’on prépare et affute. Les armées allemande, française, anglaise, russe, austro-hongroise, n’ont jamais eu autant de canons, de navires de guerre et de fusils à tir rapide.

Nous vivons une belle époque mais… pour combien de temps ?
http://ilyaunsiecle.blog.lemonde.fr/2009/06/25/26-juin-1909-vivons-nous-une-belle-epoque/

A creative life that blossomed in the asylum

Visual escape: "Cleopatra's Bed Flowers" by Aloise Corbaz, one of the inspirations for the Art Brut movement. STECK COLLECTION, SWITZERLAND; WATARIUM MUSEUM OF ART

A creative life that blossomed in the asylum After going from Switzerland to the periphery of the German court, Aloise Corbaz's artist talent was discovered in a sanitarium
By JEFF MICHAEL HAMMOND
Special to The Japan Times

(Source Japan Times) To view the pictures of Aloise Corbaz is to enter a fantastic, colorful world of a beautiful young woman with her handsome suitor, filled with carriages and crowns, roses and nights at the opera. The belle is Aloise herself, or, perhaps more precisely, Aloise's ideal self, center stage in a theatrical production far from her routine existence in a Swiss home for the mentally ill.
A new exhibition of more than 80 pictures by this remarkable artist is on show at the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art (aka Watarium), in a new exhibition simply titled "Aloise," which is being held in Japan only. One of many striking features of her work is its vibrant coloring. Leaving the black and brown pencils virtually untouched in their box, Aloise structured her pictures around flaming reds and soft pinks, supported by hues of yellow, orange, green and blue.

Since her death in 1964, Aloise has become one of the most celebrated artists in the field of Art Brut, a term coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet (1901-85), who found in the untutored and unrefined artistic output of the mentally ill an immediacy and power he thought lacking in academic art. Dubuffet collected Aloise's works, visiting her from time to time and encouraging her creativity.

Aloise was born in 1886 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Her mother died when she was 11 years old, leaving Aloise in the care of her eldest sister, whose tyrannical control left an indelible mark on Aloise's psyche and on the family. This sister, discovering Aloise's love for a priest who lived nearby, put an early and cruel end to the affair by sending her off to work as a governess in Germany in 1911, when Aloise was about 25. At first, Aloise worked for a family in Leipzig and then for a chaplain in the service of Emperor Wilhelm II in Potsdam. How involved Aloise was in court life is unclear, but coaches, thrones and jewels were recurring motifs in her vibrant pictures.

In 1913 Aloise returned to Switzerland, but her mental health soon deteriorated. She spent the rest of her life in institutions, at first with no opportunities for her creative inclinations, but from 1920 she started secretly drawing on scraps of paper with toothpaste and juice squeezed from leaves. When her activities were discovered, they were encouraged and, given colored pencils, she would draw on larger pieces of paper or in notebooks, often ripping out the pages and sewing them together into large sheets or scrolls. With similar resourcefulness, Aloise frequently used both sides of the paper she worked on and when no clean sheets of paper were available, used newspaper or pages ripped from magazines or books, including one on display in the exhibition drawn over a page from an art book on Japonisme.
Read Article... http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fa20090626a2.html
Visual escape: "Cleopatra's Bed Flowers" by Aloise Corbaz, one of the inspirations for the Art Brut movement. STECK COLLECTION, SWITZERLAND; WATARIUM MUSEUM OF ART

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• Art Brut - Art Brut Vs Satan (idiomag.com)

Heirs race to find Nazi-looted art before time runs out

Thomas Selldorff looks at the painting dyptich Altar wings “the Donors” by Marten Jakobszoon Van Heemskerk van Veen (Dutch 1498-1574) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna June 2003. The painting, that was confiscated by the Nazis from his grandfather's collection, will hopefully be restituted to him soon.

Heirs race to find Nazi-looted art before time runs out
VIENNA (Reuters) - Eighty-one-year old Thomas Selldorff, who fled Austria with his family before it was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, hopes an upcoming international conference will bolster efforts to return Nazi-looted art.

The Nazi's seized over 200 artworks owned by his grandfather, an avid art collector, as part of a policy of seizing Jewish property. So far, Selldorff has been able to retrieve only two of the lost paintings.

"I want to be able to pass these things on to my family ... I want them to have the link and an appreciation for some of the things my grandfather was involved with," said Selldorff, who lives in the United States and wants to exhibit the altar pieces by Austrian baroque artist Kremser Schmidt in a museum.

Some 65 years after World War Two, experts say thousands of artworks confiscated by the Nazis, including masterpieces by art nouveau master Gustav Klimt and expressionist Egon Schiele, still need to be restituted to their rightful owners.

Government officials from around 49 countries, dozens of non-governmental groups and Jewish representatives will meet in Prague this week to review current practices. They are likely to sign a new agreement to step up restitution efforts.

Some participants hope the conference will lead to the creation of a central body responsible for publishing updates on countries' progress, which could prompt them to do more.

The task of restituting Nazi-looted works is an epic one. The Nazis formed a bureaucracy devoted to looting and they plundered a total of 650,000 art and religious objects from Jews and other victims, the Jewish Claims Conference estimates.

Artworks were auctioned off, handed over to national museums or top Nazi officials, or stashed away for a Fuehrer museum Adolf Hitler was planning to build in the Austrian town of Linz, where he spent a part of his youth. Read on... http://www.reuters.com/article/artsNews/idUSTRE55M03A20090623

‘Bevroren billen’ Roemeens surrealisme 1928-1947 in De Kunsthal

‘Bevroren billen’ Roemeens surrealisme 1928-1947 in De Kunsthal
20 juni tot en met 13 september 2009

‘Bevroren billen’ is de vierde tentoonstelling op rij waarmee de Kunsthal een licht werpt op de Roemeense avant-garde. Na de Eerste Wereldoorlog zoeken kunstenaars naar een nieuwe internationale beeldtaal. In Roemenië groeperen kunstenaars zich rondom tijdschriften om hun ideeën vast te leggen. Een van de meest bekende tijdschriften is UNU, waar zowel bekende als onbekende kunstenaars uit de surrealistische geschiedenis aan meewerken. In de tentoonstelling is werk te zien van grote Roemeense namen als Victor Brauner, Jacques Hérold, Gherasim Luca en Jules Perahim en van internationaal gerenommeerde kunstenaars als Man Ray, Yves Tanguy en Tristan Tzara die via UNU hun artistieke gedachtegoed uitwisselen. Met ruim 100 werken waaronder tekeningen, teksten, fotocollages, boeken, schilderijen en objecten presenteert de tentoonstelling een aaneenschakeling van taalspelletjes, zwarte humor, erotische gedachten en revolutionaire ideeën.

Roemeens Surrealisme 1928-1947
Onder leiding van André Breton groeit in 1924 het surrealisme uit tot een invloedrijke Europese beweging die de menselijke geest en het onderbewuste voorop stelt. Door de in Parijs wonende Roemeense kunstenaars Tristan Tzara en Constantin Brancusi komen kunstenaars in Roemenië in contact met het surrealisme. Zij raken geïnteresseerd in theorieën over het onderbewustzijn en de droom (Sigmund Freud). Met de oprichting van het tijdschrift UNU door Saşa Panã in 1928 ontstaat het eerste Roemeense platform voor surrealistische experimenten. Het zijn vooral Gherasim Luca en Dolfi Trost die nieuwe beeldtechnieken onderzoeken zoals het automatisch tekenen, blind schilderen en blazen van verf. Van Trost, wiens hele oeuvre tot nu toe als verloren werd beschouwd is een serie tekeningen te zien. De tentoonstelling besteedt bijzondere aandacht aan de fotografie van de in vergetelheid geraakte Aurel Bauh.

De tentoonstelling vormt het sluitstuk van een reeks over de Roemeense avant-garde. Eerder kwam in de Kunsthal aan bod het dadaïsme, kubisme en constructivisme in de tentoonstellingen ‘Brancusi, Tzara en de Roemeense avant-garde’ (1997), ‘Marcel Janco, Dadaïst in hart en nieren’ (2003) en ‘ M.H.M. Maxy, Roemeens avant-gardist’ (2006).

Sharjah – the cultural emirate

Sharjah – the cultural emirate
(Source ArtRadar Asia Blog)
Sharjah is just one of seven of the emirates which make up the United Arab Emirates and is often called the ‘cultural emirate’ because its leading position in arts infrastructure. It has a well-respected biennial and three museums devoted to art:

* Museum of Islamic Civilisation
* Sharjah Art Museum and Contemporary Arab Art
* Sharjah Calligraphy Museum

His Highness the Emir’s passion and vision

Sharjah’s pre-eminent position in the Middle Eastern art scene is largely due to the energy and vision of His Highness the Emir of Sharjah and in this video Manal Ataya gives us an intriguing insight into the progressive and enlightened principles which he communicates to his museum staff.

For example, she explains that His Highness encourages staff to thirst after knowledge and he encourages extensive and continual reading.

He believes that culture and museums encourage flexibility of thinking which can help to promote openness and understanding between people and, ultimately, bring peace. He also believes that a developed sensitivity to aesthetics spills over into other facets of human endeavour, for example an appreciation of the arts can help a teacher teach and a politician polemicise and a doctor practise.

Islam prohibits the figurative in art? Not true

Manal Ataya also points out and clears up some misconceptions about the Islamic prohibition of the figure in art. She explains that there is a tradition of portraiture in the Middle East and Islamic rules are more nuanced than is commonly understood.

Islam does allow human representation and it is only forbidden in a religious context or space. She explains that there are some sects which do not allow representation of the human figure in any context but these are not Islamic rules per se.

Youthful demographics – 70% under 30 years – shaping museum plans. Read Article...
http://artradarasia.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/where-is-the-sharjah-art-museum-heading-manal-ataya-sharjah-museums-director/

In Athens, Museum Is an Olympian Feat

Arts / Art & Design
In Athens, Museum Is an Olympian Feat (NYT Permalink)
By ANTHEE CARASSAVA Published: June 20, 2009
The New Acropolis Museum, one of the highest-profile cultural projects undertaken in Europe in a decade, opens this weekend.

Moda Ilustrada – Estilo e tendência.

DAVIS LISBOA

Exposição Coletiva de Ilustração
26 de junho a 26 de julho de 2009

Galeria Olido
Av. São João, 473 – Sobreloja - Centro - São Paulo - SP - Brasil
Coquetel: 25/06/09, das 19:00 às 22:00 hs

Moda Ilustrada – Estilo e tendência.

A cultura globalizada das grandes metrópoles que valoriza a diversidade e promove a mixagem de gêneros de expressão, está estimulando o renascimento da ilustração de moda, que foi impulsionada, sobretudo, por importantes mostras exibidas em galerias de arte e museus em todo o mundo, como as retrospectivas de Versace, Armani e Westwood.

Fazendo um contraponto com o desenho de moda - que é utilizado como padrão para a correta confecção de uma roupa – vamos reconhecer que a ilustração, com forte influência na arte urbana, é uma vibrante explosão artística direcionada mais ao coração que a mente. Arte emocional, que através de um look expressa estilo de vida e tendência, a ilustração de moda atual está sinalizando que as metrópoles tornaram-se grandes laboratórios de idéias e vibrantes passarelas urbanas.

No entanto, avaliando à atual situação da ilustração de moda no Brasil, notaremos que grande parte dos ilustradores, sobretudo os recém graduados em moda, permanecem desconhecidos ou, em alguns casos, ilustram esporadicamente editoriais muito específicos, atingindo um público restrito, se considerarmos seu real potencial de impacto junto à cultura de massa.

Atuando neste contexto e reunindo mostra coletiva de arte, debates e workshops, “Moda Ilustrada” tem a missão de fomentar o mercado de ilustração de moda no Brasil e promover rupturas com estereótipos deste segmento. Através de experimentações dinâmicas e concretas envolvendo estilistas e ilustradores, esta ação visa, sobretudo, a produção de ilustração para serem exibidas na mostra coletiva em questão.

“Moda Ilustrada”, que irá estimular o uso de novas tecnologias para a produção das obras, deverá contribuir para a revitalização da imagem do consumidor no atual panorama da moda brasileira, além de fomentar a difusão e a democratização da cultura de moda contemporânea, reunindo nomes consagrados, talentos emergentes do ambiente acadêmico e o protagonismo juvenil urbano.

Fernando Zelman e Danilo Blanco

Realização: Galeria Central
Curadoria para estilistas: Danilo Blanco e Fernando Zelman
Curadoria para ilustradores: Roberto Santana
Ilustradores: Zé Otavio, Luis Catani, Chicão, Cris Burger, Silvia Rocha, Marcelo Gomes, Alexandre Orsetti, Davis Lisboa, Suppa, Roberto Santana, Josivan, Orlando Pedroso, Isabelle Ribot e Miranda.

Davis Lisboa
http://www.davislisboa.com

Galeria Olido
http://www.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/cidade/secretarias/cultura/galeria_olido/
http://galeriaolido.blogspot.com

Hermitage Amsterdam opent 20 juni 2009

A man contemplates some of the paintings at the Hermitage Amsterdam museum. EFE/Koen Suyk.

Hermitage Amsterdam opent 20 juni 2009 Eerste weekend dag en nacht geopend
http://www.hermitage.nl/nl/

De Hermitage Amsterdam zal op zaterdag 20 juni om 10.00 uur ’s morgens in het geheel verbouwde en gerenoveerde Amstelhof haar deuren openen voor het publiek. Het 17de-eeuwse ‘landmark’ aan de Amstel verandert tussen juni 2007 en juni 2009 van een verpleeghuis in een spectaculair multifunctioneel museum met tentoonstellingszalen, café-restaurant, winkels, studiecentrum, auditorium en Hermitage voor Kinderen. De Hermitage Amsterdam opent met de tentoonstelling Aan het Russische hof. Paleis en protocol in de 19de eeuw die met ruim 1800 objecten van het moedermuseum in St.-Petersburg een van de grootste tentoonstellingen ooit in Nederland belooft te worden.

De Hermitage Amsterdam viert de opening groots op de laatste dag van het voorjaar met het Witte Nacht Festival, waarop het museum 31 uur lang aaneen geopend is voor het publiek. De hele dag, avond én nacht van 20/21 juni vinden tal van feestelijke activiteiten en concerten plaats in het gebouw, in de binnentuin en langs de Amstel.

Dutch Queen and Russian President to Open New Hermitage Amsterdam Museum
(Source ArtDaily)
AMSTERDAM.- Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and the President of the Russian Federation, Mr. Dmitry Medvedev, will attend opening celebrations of the Hermitage Amsterdam museum on the evening of Friday, June 19, one day prior to the public opening of the museum on June 20, 2009. Other members of the Dutch Royal family expected to attend include Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima. The Hermitage Amsterdam opens with the dazzling exhibition, “At the Russian Court: Palace and Protocol in the 19th Century.”

The Hermitage Amsterdam is the first branch of the magnificent Russian State Museum Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The Hermitage Amsterdam will organize temporary exhibitions chosen from the collections of the Hermitage and other Russian museums. The opening exhibition will feature more than 1,800 objects to tell the story about the court life of Russian tsars, including the Romanov throne, jewelry by Fabergé, gala dresses and the last tsarina’s grand piano.

The museum is housed in the monumental 17th-century building Amstelhof, a historic building off the Amstel River in Amsterdam which has undergone nearly $50 million in renovations in preparation of the opening of the museum. The Hermitage Amsterdam’s 9,000 m2 (nearly 96,000 square feet) consists of two large galleries, cabinets, an old chapel, regents’ rooms and an enclosed garden. The building also contains a study centre, a restaurant, shops and the Hermitage for Children center.

From June 20th 2009, 10 a.m., a major new European cultural destination, the greatly expanded Hermitage Amsterdam, will welcome visitors to its elegantly restored 17th-century building in the historic heart of Amsterdam. Founded to bring the richness and grandeur of Russia’s artistic heritage to one of the West’s most charming capitals, this independent cultural institution will inaugurate its spacious new home — ten times the size of the previous building — with the exhibition At the Russian Court, a dazzling display of more than 1,800 treasures from the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

New Hermitage Museum Amsterdam
Nieuwe Herengracht 14, 1018 DP Amsterdam‎ - 020 5308755‎


Grotere kaart weergeven

Musée du Quai Branly Explores the Myth Embodied by Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan

Tarzan et la femme léopard. © 1946 Sol Lesser Productions, Tous droits réservés. © Tarzan TM and Edgar Rice Burroughs TM owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. and Used by Permission. Archives Stanislas Choko.

Musée du Quai Branly Explores the Myth Embodied by Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan

(Source ArtDaily)
PARIS.- Tarzan was a literary phenomenon from the very first book published in 1912, and soon appeared in comic strips, radio programmes, television series and films. The character, who features in many media such as posters, figurines, CDs and even games, continues to fascinate and fuel our vision of an imaginary, fantasy Africa.

In the exhibition Tarzan! or Rousseau and the Waziri, the Musée du Quai Branly, in collaboration with the Centre International de la Bande Dessinée et de l’Image (International Centre for Comic Books and Image), explores the myth embodied by this popular icon.

Through a series of objects from the collections of several French museums, as well as original comic strips, photos, excerpts of films, etc., the exhibition allows the public to discover the legend of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ famous character in the collective images and representations he embodies, which are the cornerstones of some of the greatest legends of our age.

Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in 1875 in Chicago. At first he wanted to enter the military, but gave up after failing the entrance exam for West Point. He then had a string of jobs that gave him his taste for adventure: train conductor and gold miner, among others. He then began writing, and published his first novel Under the Moons of Mars in 1912 in the “All Story” magazine. In October of the same year, Tarzan of the Apes was published, the first of the 26 novels about the famous “Ape-man”. Edgar Rice Burroughs died in 1950, having published more than 90 volumes in his lifetime, and having created other legendary characters found in the tales of Venus, the Pellucidar cycle and the adventures of John Carter.

The Myth of Tarzan
Edgar Rice Burroughs had never been to Africa, but in creating Tarzan, he was inspired by many legends, characters such as Mowgli the jungle boy in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, the noble savage, the lost Eden, the myth of the Great Ape (King Kong) and even the ancient Greek hero Hercules. He made Tarzan a real modern Western superhero/superman living in an imaginary and idealised Africa in which he accomplishes increasingly incredible exploits in adventure after adventure.

Edgar Rice Burroughs was quick to understand that the art of story telling in the 20th century was not limited to literature. He very quickly sold the rights to his novels to the Hollywood studios, and actively participated in the film adaptations. Since then, the Tarzan character has directly inspired around fifty films (including the famous performances by Johnny Weissmuller as a statuesque Tarzan, and by Christopher Lambert, cast as a romantic hero) as well as comic strips (particularly those by Burne Hogarth, whose talent, inspiration and fascination with the body in movement made him the master of the comic strip renewal and the forefather of many later artists), video games, CDs, games, as well as numerous imitations of the character (Tarou, Akim, Zembla and even Rahan). Nowadays, Tarzan remains an instantly recognisable figure through the characteristics that contribute to his iconic status: the vines, the leopard skin loincloth and his unique cry.

The Exhibition
The exhibition Tarzan! or Rousseau with the Waziri is built on several themes, representative of the universe of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ character, enriched by many objects from the collections of the Musée du Quai Branly, as well as the Louvre, the musée d’Orsay and the museums of Fontainebleau, Poissy and the Cité Internationale de la Bande dessinée in Angoulême.

The exhibition opens with an object showing Hercules shooting a bow and arrow, reminding visitors of the parallel between the two heroes who had to use strength and courage to overthrow evil in an imaginary and reconstructed universe. Throughout the exhibition, visitors are immersed in an atmosphere that mirrors Tarzan’s world, thanks to a specially created original soundtrack, a collection of comic strip images (including Burne Hogarth’s original plates), stuffed wild animals and excerpts from Hollywood films.

Visitors discover Tarzan’s universe through several themes, including Film and Tarzan, The Jungle, Tarzan’s Africa (with the Zulu, Masai, Kikuyu and leopard-men wearing the skins of big cats, Lego-like characters reflecting colonial imagery), the son of Mother Nature (in parallel with the myth of Romulus and Remus), the twelve labours of Tarzan (evoking the mythical hero Hercules), the saviour of the jungle (a pro-ecology anti-hunting figure who was against the ivory traffickers and other slave traders who were popular at the time), as well as numerous parodies making light of Tarzan.

The exhibition ends with the robot from Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), symbol of the mechanical hero who invades the urban landscape. Tarzan represents the anti-robot, the naked man faced with the decadence of modern cities.
---------------------------
http://www.quaibranly.fr/fr/programmation/expositions/prochainement/tarzan/index.html
-----------------------------------
Roger Boulay est anthropologue, spécialiste de l’art océanien et commissaire d’exposition. Il était en particulier le commissaire de l'exposition "L'aristocrate et ses cannibales : le voyage en Océanie du comte Festetics de Tolna, 1893 - 1896" présentée en 2007 au musée du quai Branly.

« Je suis venu à travers les âges, jaillissant du passé vague et distant, de la caverne de l’homme primitif… »

« Tarzan pensait à la fragilité de la frontière entre le primitif et le civilisé ».

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Cette exposition, consacrée à une icône de l’imagerie populaire, propose au public de découvrir les voies de la création du héros, et le décryptage du mythe qu’il incarne.

Si Edgar Rice Burroughs est le père absolu du personnage de Tarzan, tous ceux qui le mirent en scène - dans la bande dessinée, le cinéma, l’affiche, la figurine, le disque, le jeu…- se réfèrent à des imageries et des représentations collectives qui fondent quelques unes des mythologies les plus fortes de notre siècle.

L’exposition parcourt les origines et la nature de Tarzan, en tant que personnage et en tant que mythe (de Saturnin Farandoul, documentaire de 1914, à Greystoke en 1983), et réhabilite le personnage en tant que héros contemporain de défense de la nature.

Fewer lots and lower prices in London's sale rooms

Pablo Picasso's “Homme à l’épée” is part of Christie’s Impressionist/Modern Evening sale in London on June 23rd.

Fewer lots and lower prices in London's sale rooms
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13849543

(Source The Economist)Giovanna Bertazzoni has observed a change in the culture of the sale rooms in the year between Christie’s grand summer sale of Impressionist and Modern Art in 2008 and this year’s more subdued version. She runs these evening sales, and she tells a tale of fewer lots and generally lower prices. “There are fewer parties, fewer tours of the paintings before they go on sale,” she says. “Finding paintings to sell now depends on relationships, conversations and trust. It’s a lot more work.”

The end of the speculative bubble means that fewer collections are coming onto the market. Days when sellers were tempted by generous guarantees are over. Curators such as Miss Bertazzoni did not have to be told by management to stop offering them. They no longer make commercial sense.
There are 46 lots in her June evening sale this year, compared with 72 last year. Total estimates vary from £39.25m ($64.60m) on the low end to an optimistic £53.65m at the top. Last year's sale raised £144.5m, which included a £40m Monet.

Yet prospects in London look slightly more promising than in New York. According to Artprice.com, sales in New York were down 35% by the end of the first quarter of 2009 compared with 2008. One way of measuring this is the number of sales above $1m in the contemporary art market: 40 this year, compared with 132 in 2008. The market for Impressionists is less volatile than for contemporary painting, but it is also hurting. Sotheby’s May sale of Impressionist and Modern art in New York fetched $52.9m, far less than the forecast $81.5m. Last year Roman Abramovich purchased a Francis Bacon “Triptych” for $77m, which was only $3.9m less than the total Christie’s made from the sale of 49 contemporary art lots in New York in May.
Contrary to pessimistic pundits, Miss Bertazzoni declares that prices fetched by some painters have still to reach their peak. She identifies Max Ernst, Alexander Calder, Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso's later works as being under-priced. But in Picasso's case this is a relative judgement. His late work may be under-priced compared with the rest of his oeuvre, but he is not cheap. Christie’s top lot in the summer sale is a late Picasso titled “Homme à l’épée” (pictured). It is a colourful piece painted with simple decorative lines that apparently appeal to contemporary art collectors. The painting sold for £2.7m in February 2005. The estimate this summer has risen to £5m-7m.

Looking at this Picasso, it is not astonishing to learn that it was painted in a day; July 26th 1969, to be precise. Picasso liked the image and repeated it four times. Indeed, another “Man with a sword” appears in Sotheby’s summer sale a day after the Christie’s sale, though it comes with an estimate of £6m-8m. This display of optimism is based partly on a success in Christie’s May sale in New York of Picasso’s “Mousquetaire à la pipe”—a more carefully considered piece than the men with their swords—which fetched $14.6m. A remarkable performance by the prolific and versatile old goat. Read Article...
Contrary to pessimistic pundits, Miss Bertazzoni declares that prices fetched by some painters have still to reach their peak. She identifies Max Ernst, Alexander Calder, Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso's later works as being under-priced. But in Picasso's case this is a relative judgement. His late work may be under-priced compared with the rest of his oeuvre, but he is not cheap. Christie’s top lot in the summer sale is a late Picasso titled “Homme à l’épée” (pictured). It is a colourful piece painted with simple decorative lines that apparently appeal to contemporary art collectors. The painting sold for £2.7m in February 2005. The estimate this summer has risen to £5m-7m.

Looking at this Picasso, it is not astonishing to learn that it was painted in a day; July 26th 1969, to be precise. Picasso liked the image and repeated it four times. Indeed, another “Man with a sword” appears in Sotheby’s summer sale a day after the Christie’s sale, though it comes with an estimate of £6m-8m. This display of optimism is based partly on a success in Christie’s May sale in New York of Picasso’s “Mousquetaire à la pipe”—a more carefully considered piece than the men with their swords—which fetched $14.6m. A remarkable performance by the prolific and versatile old goat.

Pablo Picasso's “Homme à l’épée” is part of Christie’s Impressionist/Modern Evening sale in London on June 23rd.

Exhibition on the Infinite in the Finite, the Indefinite, and the Unfinished at Palazzo Fortuny

Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), Piazza d’Italia, 1955/60. Olio su tela/ Oil on canvas. Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, GAM, Bologna.

Exhibition on the Infinite in the Finite, the Indefinite, and the Unfinished at Palazzo Fortuny
http://www.museiciviciveneziani.it/frame.asp?pid=1709&musid=196&sezione=mostre

Venice – The Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and the Vervoordt Foundation announce In-finitum, taking place in the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice from 6 June until 15 November, 2009. With In-finitum, the trilogy which started with Artempo: Where Time Becomes Art (Venice, 2007) and continued with Academia: Qui es-tu? (Paris, 2008) will come full circle. Once again set in the magnificent surroundings of the Palazzo Fortuny, In-finitum will guide the visitor from the soul of the unfinished to the border of the infinite, a spiritual journey along works of art abundant with energy.

The trilogy as conceived by Axel Vervoordt establishes a perfect balance through the natural time-flow between its three chapters. Artempo: Where Time Becomes Art dealt with the beauty of passing time touching the world, with the mysteriousness of patina and the magical osmosis which exists where cosmos and matière interact. In Academia: Qui es-tu?, the transmission of knowledge and wisdom held center stage, a fixed focal point gently rocked however by the continuous perpetuum mobile of questions and answers. The finale, In-finitum, will traverse into the other realm as it reaches into the universe of the unfinished and the infinite.

The infinite
Questioning ‘infinity’ is a spiritual journey. The human condition strives for perfection, hungers to be in pursuit of completion. On this quest for the imperceptible, the unimaginable, the incomprehensible, man gets confronted with his boundaries and struggles with what is unachievable. It is in this part of incompleteness that the infinite resides, the void, the recipient and source of the all and everything, of the none and nothing. The infinite as a never-ending road to completion, knowledge and enlightenment has inspired intellectuals, artists, scientists and literati since the beginning of reasoning times. Their discoveries and writings, artistic impressions and thoughts will shape another segment of the In-finitum exhibition.

Artists
In-finitum will present works by Giovanni Anselmo, Natvar Bhavsar, Pierre Bonnard, Berlinde de Bruyckere, Michael Borremans, Alberto Burri, Alexander Calder, Paul Cézanne, Antonio Canova, Eugène Delacroix, Ray & Charles Eames, Lucio Fontana, Adam Fuss, Giuseppe Gabellone, Francesco Hayez, Ann-Veronica Janssens, Anish Kapoor, Anselm Kiefer, Kimsooja, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Brice Marden, Fausto Melotti, Mario Merz, Joan Mirò, Tatsuo Miyajima, Vic Muniz, Renato Nicolodi, Roman Opalka, Palagio Pelagi, Pablo Picasso, Otto Piene, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Guido Reni, Gerhard Richter, George Romney, Thomas Ruff, Kazuo Shiraga, Ettore Spaletti, Vassilikis Takis, Diana Thater, Dirk Van De Len, Jef Verheyen, Rik Wouters, Gilberto Zorio … and many others.

Kunstmuseum Bern presents today Ricco. New works in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Bern, on view through October 18, 2009

Ricco Wassmer (1915–1972) ist in Bern kein Unbekannter mehr. Vor sieben Jahren bot das Kunstmuseum die Gelegenheit, die idealisierenden Traumwelten dieses beinahe vergessenen Aussenseiters jenseits der Avantgarde in einer umfassenden Retrospektive kennen zu lernen.
Die verschlüsselten, meist nach fotografischen Vorlagen ausgeführten Inszenierungen zwischen Peinture naïve, Neuer Sachlichkeit und verspieltem Surrealismus haben damals das Interesse eines breiteren Publikums geweckt.

Seither konnte das Kunstmuseum Bern durch das Legat des Sammlers Emanuel Martin sowie weitere Schenkungen, Dauerleihgaben und Erwerbungen eine repräsentative Werkgruppe ansammeln.

Riccos Gemälde und Arbeiten auf Papier aus den hauseigenen Beständen werden nun erstmals in einer kleinen Ausstellung gezeigt. Die Schau wird organisiert im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts für einen Œuvrekatalog, der 2010 erscheinen soll.
http://www.kunstmuseumbern.ch/index.cfm?nav=567,1343&SID=1&DID=9&aID=256
Kunstmuseum Bern http://www.kunstmuseumbern.ch/index.cfm?nav=567,1333&SID=1&DID=9


Ricco. New Works in the Collection of the Kunstmuseum Bern Opens Today

(Source ArtDaily)
BERN.- Kunstmuseum Bern presents today Ricco. New works in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Bern, on view through October 18, 2009. Ricco Wassmer (1915-1972) is no longer an unknown in Berne. Seven years ago an extensive retrospective exhibition at the Kunstmuseum provided the opportunity to become acquainted with the idealising dream worlds of this almost forgotten outsider, whose work can be located beyond the avant-garde.

At that time, the interest of a broad public was roused by the encoded scenes, usually done after photographic model and combining peinture naive, new objectivity and playful surrealism. Since then, the Kunstmuseum Bern has been able to put together a representative work group thanks to the legacy of the collector Emanuel Martin and to further donations, works on permanent loan and acquisitions.

This is the first time Ricco's paintings and works on paper from the museum's own stocks are being shown in a small exhibition. The show is taking place within the framework of the research project related to a catalogue of works which is scheduled for publication in 2010. Curator and work catalogue project leader: Marc-Joachim Wasmer.

Window Shoppers. Seasoned collectors spend carefully at Art Basel, the leading contemporary fair

Window Shoppers
Seasoned collectors spend carefully at Art Basel, the leading contemporary fair
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124475192106507443.html

(Source Wall Street Journal)
BASEL -- This week art lovers from the around the world have descended on this small industrial city in northwestern Switzerland for Art Basel, the world's preeminent fair for contemporary art. The turnout has been as strong as ever, but seasoned collectors are spending carefully and brand-new buyers are scarce, dealers say. The fair ends Sunday.

Signs of the economic downturn were still evident: Several smaller satellite fairs like Red Dot and Bridge canceled plans to join this round because of recession fears. Zurich dealer Bruno Bischofberger is still seeking a big spender for his lone offering, Andy Warhol's "Big Retrospective Painting." The 11-meter-wide work is a highlight reel of Marilyn Monroes, Chairman Maos and soup cans and is priced at €53 million. "It's a lot for a painting," Mr. Bischofberger concedes, "but it's a lot of painting."
Other highlights include new Old Master-style portraits by Kerry James Marshall, better known for his idyllic scenes of African-American suburbia, at the booth of New York dealer Jack Shainman. Mr. Marshall's untitled depiction of a woman holding a palette sold for $350,000, the gallery confirmed.

Zurich gallery Hauser & Wirth, meanwhile, placed Subodh Gupta's €650,000 creamy table laden with unmovable stone cutlery, "Marble utensils on table," next to Louise Bourgeois' untitled 2006 quilt-like wall hanging, which sold for an undisclosed price. The pairing feels equally haunting and homey.

Standouts among the satellite fairs like Liste include Israeli artist Elad Lassry's untitled high-concept film, in which actor Eric Stoltz assumes the persona of a Jerome Robbins-style choreographer directing a blonde in a red unitard. (The blonde evokes Mary Martin, star of Robbins's 1955 hit, "Peter Pan.") The work at David Kordansky Gallery is priced at $30,000.

Basel's organizers imported an extra dose of pageantry this year by paying to reproduce an updated version of "Il Tempo del Postino," an avant-garde theater hit curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno at the Manchester International Festival two summers ago. In this so-called "visual arts opera," a group of artists including Doug Aitken and Anri Sala are each given up to 15 minutes on a theater stage to present a performance piece. (Mr. Aitken's segment involves speed-talking American auctioneers; Mr. Sala's segment features opera singers in geisha costumes who pass an aria between them, lip-synching whenever it's not their turn.) Read Article... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124475192106507443.html

Small World Crammed on Biennale’s Grand Stage

The French billionaire François Pinault has transformed the old Customs House into a museum for his collection. Left, a painting by Cindy Sherman and a sculpture by Jeff Koons.
Photo: Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Small World Crammed on Biennale’s Grand Stage
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN Published: June 11, 2009(New York Times Permalink)
The 53rd Venice Biennale is tidy, disciplined, cautious and unremarkable, suggesting a somewhat dull, deflated contemporary art world, professionalized to a fault, in search of a fresh consensus.

Bijzondere lezing bij de tentoonstelling van Terry Rodgers; socioloog Dick Pels spreekt over Het succes van de leegte.

Bijzondere lezing bij de tentoonstelling van Terry Rodgers;
socioloog Dick Pels spreekt over Het succes van de leegte.
zaterdag 27 juni 2009, aanvang 15.00 u

De celebrity-cultuur dringt steeds verder door in onze leefwereld. Programma's als Big Brother en X-Factor, en een icoon als Paris Hilton getuigen hiervan. Beroemd-heid die op niets anders berust dan op het feit dat iemand bekend is. Leven als kitsch: waarop is dit eigenlijk gebaseerd?

Socioloog Dick Pels bespreekt dit fenomeen aan de hand van het werk van de Amerikaanse schilder Terry Rodgers en geeft zijn visie op een hedendaagse maatschappij die zich steeds meer lijkt te kenmerken door individualisering, seksualisering en consumptief gedrag.

Het Scheringa Museum voor Realisme organiseert deze zomer de eerste museale solotentoonstelling in Europa van de Amerikaanse schilder Terry Rodgers (1947). Rodgers is een talentvolle, maar eveneens controversiële schilder die wereldwijd tentoonstelt. Zijn zeer realistisch en dynamisch geschilderde figuurstukken tonen een wereld waarin de 'young and beautiful' prominent in beeld zijn gebracht. Weelde, schoonheid en promiscuïteit kunnen de leegte echter niet verhullen.
Scheringa Museum voor Magisch Realisme.

Picasso Drawings Valued at $9.8 Million and $14 Million Stolen from Paris Museum

Picasso Drawings Valued at $9.8 Million and $14 Million Stolen from Paris Museum

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=31357

PARIS.- (EFE) A sketchbook containing drawings by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso valued at between 7 million and 10 million euros ($9.8 million and $14 million) was stolen from the Picasso Museum in Paris, police told Efe Tuesday.

The sketchbook contains about 30 drawings and was stolen either on Monday or Tuesday, during which time the museum was closed to the general public, without any break-in being registered at the museum, which is located in a 17th century baroque palace, police said.
Museum workers discovered the theft when they were making an inventory.
The sketchbook was seen Monday in the glass case in which it is displayed but on Tuesday it was not there, police said.
The glass display case was locked but no specific tool was required to open it, the Culture Ministry said.
Beside the case where the sketchbook was are drawings done in lead pencil on paper by Picasso in two phases, between 1917 and 1918 and between 1923 and 1924, the Culture Ministry said.

The sketchbook contained 33 drawings collected in a 16x24 centimeter (6.3x9.5 inches) format and its cover has the inscription "Album" in gilded letters, the ministry said.
The museum was open on Tuesday in a special arrangement for residents of District 3 in Paris invited to the facility by its mayor.

The Picasso Museum is being remodeled and so the most important works housed there have been loaned to other institutions with the twofold aim of facilitating the refurbishing work and financing it.
Musée national Picasso Paris
http://www.musee-picasso.fr/

A “virtual” Venice Biennale to go on show in Moscow

A “virtual” Venice Biennale to go on show in Moscow
Video footage of pavilion and Arsenale exhibitions on display at the Garage

(Source Art Basel daily edition)
Dasha Zhukova, the founder of the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture in Moscow and partner of billionaire Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, has told The Art Newspaper that video footage of the national pavilions in the Giardini and the displays in the Arsenale will be shown on large screens in the gallery for one month from 15 June. The footage also contains artist interviews as well as a commentary by Russian artist Gosha Ostretsov. “A lot of people haven’t been able to travel to Venice this year because of the financial situation,” she said. So Ms Zhukova sent a team to the biennale to film the displays and bring the show back to Moscow.

Speaking in Venice last Friday, she also revealed plans for a large exhibition of contemporary Russian art to be held at the Garage later this year. It will go on an international tour. A venue has already been found in Paris, although she declined to identify it. Talks are also underway to send the exhibition to “Berlin, London, New York and Los Angeles”.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/A-virtual-Venice-Biennale-to-go-on-show-in-Moscow/17462

Art 40 Basel takes place June 10 – 14, 2009.

The work 'Big Retrospective Painting' (1979), by Andy Warhol, is on view at Art Basel. Works of art by more than 2,500 artists are presented in what is the most important art fair in the world. Photo EFE/ Georgios Kefalas.

Art 40 Basel takes place June 10 – 14, 2009.

The world's premier international art show for Modern and contemporary works, Art Basel features nearly 300 leading galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. More than 2,500 artists, ranging from the great masters of Modern art to the latest generation of emerging stars, are represented in the show's multiple sections. The exhibition includes the highest-quality paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photographs, video and editioned works.
More: http://www.artbasel.com/go/id/ss/lang/eng/

BASEL.- The 40th edition of Art Basel takes place in the culturally rich city of Basel, Switzerland, from June 10 through June 14, 2009. As the world’s premier art show, Art Basel marks the annual reunion of the international artworld. This year, more than 300 exhibiting galleries from all over the globe were selected from a record number of more than 1,100 applications, and will be showing works by over 2,500 artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Art Unlimited hall, with its 60 large-scale projects, and the Public Art Projects on the exhibition square offer further highlights....More: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=31352

ING Art Management website

ING Art Management website
The international art collection of the ING Group, consists of national collections world wide. From the description of the origins and development of the different collections, one seeks how the various collections complete each other, not only in terms of art history but also thematically.

Works of art represented in or purchased for the ING Group Collection connect the collections of:
# ING Collection Belgium

# ING Collection Mexico

# ING Collection Netherlands

# ING Collection Poland

# ING Collection United Kingdom

Facts & Figures

# 25.000 works of high quality

# on display at 1300 locations

# enjoyed by 120,000 employees worldwide

# national curators in the Netherlands, Belgium, United Kingdom, Mexico and Poland

# contemporary art

# in the Netherlands: focus on figurative art

Amstelveenseweg 500
location code: IH 07 202
PO Box 810
1000 AV Amsterdam
T +31 20 541 6604, F +31 20 541 8994

www.ingartcollection.com

CAN ART BE TAUGHT TO THE FACEBOOK GENERATION?

CAN ART BE TAUGHT TO THE FACEBOOK GENERATION?
The Saatchi Gallery / Sunday Telegraph Art Prize for Schools debate, presented by Intelligence Squared
July1, 2009


Speakers:

Camila Batmanghelidjh Advocate for vulnerable children and founder of two children's charities, The Place 2 Be and Kids Company where she currently works with some of the most traumatised young people.

Stephen Bayley Broadcaster and consultant. Founding director of London's Design Museum and outspoken commentator on all matters concerning art in everyday life.

Alain de Botton Writer of a number of bestselling essays including most recently 'The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work'. Co-founder of The School of Life, 'a new social enterprise offering good ideas for everyday living'.

Antony Gormley Artist best known for his large-scale works such as 'Angel of the North' and 'Event Horizon' which explore the collective body and the relationship between self and other. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994 and has been a Royal Academician since 2003.

Grayson Perry Winner in 2003 of the Turner Prize which he accepted wearing a purple satin party frock. Best known for his elaborate ceramic vases which at a distance seem classically decorative but on closer inspection are covered with narratives and commentaries dealing with aesthetic, cultural, social and political subjects.

Chair: Joan Bakewell Journalist and broadcaster.

Event Information: The discussion will take place on 1 July 2009 at The Saatchi Gallery
Doors open at 6:15 pm. The discussion starts at 7:00 pm and finishes at 8:15 pm.

Preview of the 53rd Venice Biennale 2009

Preview of the 53rd Venice Biennale 2009

Its that time again, when the international art community packs its bags and heads for Venice. The 53rd Venice Biennale is now open, and in this film, made in collaboration with the Guardian newspaper, art critic Adrian Searle presents his roundup. Whats hot? Whats not? Find out here. Check out the next issue of TateShots for more Venice coverage and artist interviews.

Exhibitions axed as recession bites US worst hit as sponsorship withdrawn and endowment wealth shrinks

Exhibitions axed as recession bites
US worst hit as sponsorship withdrawn and endowment wealth shrinks

(Source The Art Newspaper)
NEW YORK/LONDON. An Art News­paper survey suggests that a growing number of exhibitions are being cancelled because of the recession. We have identified over 20 important shows that have been axed (or, in a few cases, postponed) later this year or in 2010.

Our list almost certainly represents the tip of the iceberg. Many venues have not yet published their 2010 programme, and some unannounced shows that had been provisionally scheduled are being quietly dropped. Decisions may have been influenced by a number of factors, but according to our research financial concerns were key.

The situation seems considerably worse in North America than in Europe. This is probably because North American museums are much more dependent on private sponsorship and endowments—particularly hit by the recession—while Euro­pean institutions receive more government funding.

Among the worst-hit institutions is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma), with at least three major shows being lost. In August it was to have presented “Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan”, coming from New York’s International Center of Photography, where it was shown last year. This has now been cancelled.

In November, an exhibition on Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles was due to come to Lacma after first showing at Tate Modern in October 2008 and the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (where it closed in April). The entire North American tour has been cancelled, including presentations at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts (originally scheduled for June) and Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario (in March 2010).

Meanwhile, a retrospective on the Armenian-born Ameri­can artist Arshile Gorky who died in 1948 had been scheduled for Lacma in June 2010, but has been dropped. Organ­ised by the Philadelphia
Mus­eum of Art (opening October 2009), Tate Modern is now the only other venue for the exhibition (spring 2010).
In some cases, late moves have been made to rescue shows. Tate Britain had long planned a major exhibition on Zoffany for autumn 2010. Earlier this year it was dropped, partly because of its financial viability in the present economic circumstances. Read Article...

Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2009

Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2009
8 June—16 August 2009

Now in its 241st year, the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition 2009 continues the tradition of displaying a wide range of new work by both established and unknown artists in all media including painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture and architecture.

This year's co-ordinators, Royal Academicians Ann Christopher, Eileen Cooper and Will Alsop have selected works for the exhibition around the theme of 'Making Space'. Since the founding of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768, the annual Summer Exhibition has become the world’s largest open-submission contemporary art exhibition.

The Royal Academy is delighted to once again be collaborating with the BBC to celebrate the Summer Exhibition.

Venice Biennale Opens Showing Works by Over 90 Artists from all Over the World

Ragnar Kjartansson, The End, 2009. Performance installation. Commissioned by the Center for Icelandic Art. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik. Photo: Rafael Pinho

Venice Biennale Opens Showing Works by Over 90 Artists from all Over the World

(Source ArtDaily)VENICE.- The 53rd International Art Exhibition, entitled Making Worlds, directed by Daniel Birnbaum, organized by La Biennale di Venezia, and chaired by Paolo Baratta, will open to the public from Sunday June, 7th to Sunday November, 22nd 2009 in the Giardini (50,000 m2) and the Arsenale (38,000 m2) as well as in various other locations around the city.

The Director of the 53rd Exhibition, Daniel Birnbaum, has been Rector of the Staedelschule Frankfurt/Main and its Kunsthalle Portikus since 2001. Making Worlds, presented in the renewed Palazzo delle Esposizioni in the Giardini and in the Arsenale, is a single, large exhibition that articulates different themes woven into one whole. It is not divided into sections. Considering collectives, it comprises works by over 90 artists from all over the world and includes many new works and on-site commissions in all disciplines. “The title of the exhibition, Making Worlds – says Director Daniel Birnbaum – expresses my wish to emphasize the process of creation. A work of art represents a vision of the world and if taken seriously it can be seen as a way of making a world. The strength of the vision is not dependent on the kind or complexity of the tools brought into play. Hence all forms of artistic expression are present: installation art, video and film, sculpture, performance, painting and drawing, and a live parade. Taking ´worldmaking´ as a starting point, also allows the exhibition to highlight the fundamental importance of certain key artists for the creativity of successive generations, just as much as exploring new spaces for art to unfold outside the institutional context and beyond the expectations of the art market. Making Worlds is an exhibition driven by the aspiration to explore worlds around us as well as worlds ahead. It is about possible new beginnings—this is what I would like to share with the visitors of the Biennale.”

For the direction of the exhibition Daniel Birnbaum is supported by Jochen Volz, artistic organization. Additional advice is provided by an international team of correspondents consisting of Savita Apte, Tom Eccles, Hu Fang, and Maria Finders.

On occasion of the 53rd International Art Exhibition – the Foundation La Biennale di Venezia inaugurates a number of important structural and organisational developments:

At the Arsenale, the Italian Pavilion has been enlarged from 800 to 1,800 square meters, now opening out to the Giardino delle Vergini and adjacent to a new public entrance. Here a newly constructed bridge links the far side of the Arsenale to the Sestiere di Castello. This renewed Italian Pavilion will be reserved for exhibitions organised by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Affairs. The Italian participation at the 53rd International Art Exhibition is curated by Beatrice Buscaroli and Luca Beatrice. Furthermore, the Arsenale’s exhibition spaces have been extended by developing a larger part of the Giardino delle Vergini (Garden of the Virgins), now measuring 6.000 square meters and offering an enchanting new exhibition space for the main exhibition. Read on...
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=31263

Biennale di Venezia, http://www.labiennale.org/it/Home.html

Center for Icelandic Art, http://www.cia.is/

Art Market Insight [May 2009]

Art Market Insight [May 2009]

(Source ArtPrice)Press Release Copyright@Artprice.com
Mixed results in New York [May 09]

At the end of the first quarter of 2009, the global art market price index showed a 10% contraction. But in New York City, host to some of the world’s most prestigious art sales, the crisis is being felt particularly hard: the same index shows a 35% local contraction over the same period. The May sales in Manhattan were therefore awaited with a great deal of apprehension. Over roughly ten days, the top end of the market was seriously tested with the Impressionist and Modern Sales (5 May at Sotheby’s, 6 May at Christie’s) and then the Post-war and Contemporary Art sales (between 12 and 16 May).

In one week of New York sales, the three main auction houses sold 734 works of Contemporary Art generating a total sales revenue of $180m… i.e. $660m less than at the same May sales of 2008! At the time, the market was surfing on a mood of speculative euphoria. Today, in 2009, the deterioration of market conditions has inevitably produced some major counter-performances. For example, the number of sales above the $1m line in the Contemporary Art segment (40) was less than a third its previous year total of 132.

The end of a speculative era… exhausted demand leading to a restricted offer… substantially reduced estimates … the figures posted by the big three auctioneers (Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury & Company) were but a pale shadow of their former glory. The contraction was particularly hard at Sotheby’s. The auctioneer had announced a 58% fall in its first quarter revenue compared with the year-earlier period, and was hoping to make up for lost ground with the New York sales. But the $81.5 expected from the Impressionist & Modern sale of 5 May shrank to a final figure of $52.9m, i.e. $155m less than the previous year. A week later, the total revenue from its Part I Contemporary Art sale was down 87.4% on the year-earlier figure.

Remember that in May 2008 Sotheby’s generated its best ever performance for a Contemporary Art sale with a record figure of $320.6m, substantially higher than the most optimistic forecasts. This year, Sotheby’s will have to be content with a meagre $40m… Of course, the comparison with last year is particularly brutal after the Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovic, bought a Francis BACON Triptych for $77m. That figure was very close to the total revenue generated this year by Christie’s Contemporary Art sale ($80.8m from 49 lots).
Sotheby’s managed to sell 39 of the 40 lots it presented on 12 May 2009, compared with 73 lots sold in 2008. The results were mixed for the key pieces in the sale: the large-scale canvas by Martin KIPPENBERGER sold within its estimate range at $3.6m; Jeff KOONS’ baroque Easter egg fetched $1.2m (but was estimated $4.7m) and Andy WARHOL’s monumental Camouflage fetched $1.45m vs. an estimate of $1.8m. Among the other million-dollar sales at Sotheby’s, a dark and dramatic Mark ROTHKO painting, Black, Red-Brown on Violet fetched $1.4m vs. an estimate of $1.5m-$2m. The next day, Christie’s bought in a more colourful work by the same artist that was over-estimated at $3m- $4m. The Americain Richard PRINCE and the British artist Cecily BROWN received better support: Can You Imagine by Richard Prince sold for $1.15m vs. and estimate of $600,000 - $800,000, and Girls Eating Birds by Charles Saatchi’s protégée Cecily Brown fetched $1m vs. a high estimate of $900,000 (Sotheby’s).

At the end of the day, Sotheby’s had generated 14 sales above the $1m line in the Contemporary Art field compared with Christie’s score of 26. The best results at Christie’s were $5.3m for Roy LICHTENSTEIN’s Frolic, $5.15m for Jean-Michel BASQUIAT’s Mater, $7m for David HOCKNEY’s Beverly Hills Housewife, $4.1m for Peter DOIG’s Night Fishing, and $5,8m for Richard DIEBENKORN’s Ocean Park No 117. Jeff Koons generated a surprisingly good result with his Jim Beam - J.B. Turner Engine which sold for twice its estimate at $2m. Read Article...
http://web.artprice.com/AMI/AMI.aspx?id=NDk5NTYyMTAzNzgzNzk=

Schoeni Gallery in Hong Kong plans online archive for website

Schoeni Gallery in Hong Kong plans online archive for website
(Source Artradar Asia)
Head of Schoeni gallery Nicole Schoeni told Art Radar that as part of the revamp of the website, there are plans to digitise their artist literature to form an on-line archive, “though it may take a while given that there is 16 years’ worth of material” she warned with a laugh.

Zhang Lin Hai

Nicole’s father Manfred Schoeni along with Johnson Chang of Hanart were pivotal in the nineties in bringing Chinese contemporary art to the international stage. For example Schoeni held the historically important 8+8+1 exhibition in 1997 which showcased the works of 15 contemporary Chinese artists many of whom are now internationally famous including Yue Min Jun, Zeng Fan Zhi, Zhang Xiao Gang, Guo Jin and Yang Shao Bin.

Harnessing the web to share historically important art materials with a global audience is, perhaps surprisingly, still an unusual initiative. While museums are making big strides, few galleries as yet are making materials pubicly available even when this would help promote current exhibitions. No doubt this will change and we look forward to the day when research , images and interviews, previously locked down in print publications such as catalogues, are released to a wider web audience as a matter of course.

In the meantime, Schoeni is also making its first forays into the world of video documentary with a just-released video of Chinese artist Zhang Lin Hai’s recent show ‘Stunned Speechless at Today Museum in Beijing.

Zhang Lin Hai’s work often features a repeated signature motif of a bald male child against hauntingly bleak backdrops. This motif was born out of his own experiences of being adopted as a child and witnessing the devastation of the Cultural Revolution.

http://artradarasia.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/schoeni-gallery-hong-kong-plans-on-line-archive-for-website/

Schoeni Gallery, http://www.schoeni.com.hk/ Zhang Lin Hai, http://www.schoeni.com.hk/ZhangLinHai.htm
Zhang Lin Hai at Today Art Museum Show 2008 Beijing

Tweejaarlijkse tentoonstelling met recent werk van leden van de Kunstenaarsvereniging Laren-Blaricum in Singer Laren

Kunstenaarsvereniging Laren-Blaricum 02/06/2009 t/m 30/08/2009 Tweejaarlijkse tentoonstelling met recent werk van leden van de Kunstenaarsvereniging Laren-Blaricum in Singer Laren

Kijk ook op http://www.kunstenaarslarenblaricum.nl

De Kunstenaarsvereniging Laren/Blaricum kan bogen op een lange traditie. Al in 1910 werd in de gelijknamige kunstenaarskolonie een kunstenaarsvereniging opgericht waarvan de leden onder meer exposeerden in het Larense Hotel Hamdorff. Hier ontstond een cultureel klimaat dat kunstenaars van ver over de grenzen aantrok. De jaarlijkse kunstenaarsfeesten waren een fenomeen. De ‘Vereeniging voor Beeldende Kunstenaars Laren-Blaricum’ werd in 1921 opgericht onder voorzitterschap van de schilder Co Breman. Om lid te worden moest ter ballotage werk ingezonden worden voor de jaarlijkse tentoonstelling. Deze verkooptentoonstellingen waren een groot succes, totdat in 1978 de laatste tentoonstelling in Hotel Hamdorff plaatsvond.
Een nieuwe expositiegelegenheid werd gevonden in Singer Laren. Sinds 2003 vindt de tentoonstelling tweejaarlijks plaats. De vereniging heeft ruim 40 leden die in verschillende technieken werken. Belangrijk is dat zij een band met Laren-Blaricum en omgeving hebben.
Lees verder...
http://www.singerlaren.nl/Museum_Tentoonstellingen.html?i=23

ABSTRACT AMERICA: NEW PAINTING AND SCULPTURE at Saatchi Gallery, London

Aaron Young, Greeting Card 10a, 2007. Stained plywood, acrylic, burnt rubber, 6 panels: 4 x 8 ft each. Overall: 12 x 16 ft. Courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery, London ©Aaron Young, 2009.

ABSTRACT AMERICA: NEW PAINTING AND SCULPTURE at Saatchi Gallery, London
29th May - 13th September
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/abstract_america_painting_sculpture/


(Art Daily) LONDON.- In October 2008, the Saatchi Gallery re-opened in the 70,000 sq. ft. Duke of York’s HQ building on King’s Road in the heart of London. With free admission to all shows, the Saatchi Gallery aims to bring contemporary art to the widest possible audience. Its first show, The Revolution Continues: New Art from China attracted over 400,000 visitors breaking the record previously held by Sensation at The Royal Academy, and the second show Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East has attracted over 350,000 visitors to date.

Now, the Saatchi Gallery’s third show, Abstract America: New Painting and Sculpture, opened, presenting a survey of emerging art from the USA. Thirty-two artists are in the exhibition, representing an exciting new generation of painters and sculptors. With a historical nod to their Abstract Expressionist predecessors of the midtwentieth century, these artists are heavily influenced by the new digital age. Old master palettes, Manga purple and bubble gum pinks come together in work that embraces Photoshop, TV, the internet and many other contemporary influences.

Abstract America is set to shape our understanding of the work of this vital group of artists, who have absorbed these many aspects of contemporary life and chosen very individual ways to communicate.

Abstract America presents works by Kristin Baker, John Bauer, Mark Bradford, Tom Burr, Joe Bradley, Jedediah Caesar, Carter, Eric and Heather ChanSchatz, Peter Coffin, Guerra de la Paz, Francesca DiMattio, Bart Exposito, Mark Grotjahn, Jacob Hashimoto, Rachel Harrison, Patrick Hill, Ryan Johnson, Matt Johnson, Paul Lee, Chris Martin, Elizabeth Neel, Baker Overstreet, Stephen G. Rhodes, Amanda Ross-Ho, Sterling Ruby, Gedi Sibony, Amy Sillman, Agathe Snow, Kirsten Stoltmann, Dan Walsh, Jonas Wood and Aaron Young.

Fiona Tan's Disorient to Represent the Dutch Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia

Fiona Tan, Disorient, 2009. HD installation, colour, 5:1 surround, 2 HD-cam safety masters, 2 HD projectors, 2 computers, surround amplifier, surround speakers, edition of 4 © Fiona Tan, courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London.

Fiona Tan's Disorient to Represent the Dutch Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia
(Source ArtDaily)
VENICE.- New York-based Dutch curator Saskia Bos selected Fiona Tan to represent the Netherlands at the 53rd International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Tan is working on a new audio-visual installation conceived especially for the presentation in Venice.

Fiona Tan describes herself as ‘a professional foreigner, whose identity is defined by that which I am not’. Her work will never be a straightforward search for truth or identity: she uses a variety of means to unravel processes of recollection and fill in story lines, sometimes using found footage with which to confront the observer with informal history. Through professional analysis and the poetic translation of her observations, she creates images that become symbols of the fading memory of a fast-changing world. Her installations and films are the result of her ongoing investigation into representation and the role of images and portraits in contemporary culture. Sometimes Tan’s work refers to what is known in art history as ‘provenance’. This was also the title of a recent installation by Tan at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, in which she used surprising means to translate the 17th-century gaze into the present day.

For the Biennale, a new work by Tan will refer to Venice’s pivotal position in the history of geostrategy in the time before the discovery of new routes to Asia diluted the city’s power. Tan’s fascination with geography, travellers and their journeys has led her to explore the biographies of famous merchants and the desire to acquire new experiences and possessions. Her project Disorient attempts to bridge the centuries by creating connections with both contemporary day-to-day reality and with the symbolic past that every visitor to Venice wants to grasp.

Fiona Tan (b. 1966) has lived and worked in Amsterdam for more than 20 years. The daughter of a Chinese father and an Australian mother, she was born in Indonesia, but the country’s repressive regime drove her family to Australia. She went on to study in Germany and the Netherlands, which makes her past comparable to that of an immigrant family or a child of the diaspora.
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=31246

La Biennale di Venezia, 53rd International Art Exhibition

La Biennale di Venezia 06 | 06 | 2009 53rd International Art Exhibition Venice, 6th June 2009
The International Jury of the 53rd International Art Exhibition, comprised of Jack Bankowsky (USA), Homi K. Bhabha (India), Sarat Maharaj (South Africa), Angela Vettese (Italy, president), and Julia Voss (Germany) has decided to confer the official awards for the 53rd International Art Exhibition as follows:

Golden Lion for best National Participation
to the United States of America
(Pavilion in the Giardini)
Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens
Commissioners: Carlos Basualdo, Michael R. Taylor
http://www.labiennale.org/it/Home.html

Opening Punta Della Dogma

Paul McCarty, Train, Pig, Island, 2007. Schiuma, poliuretanica, tecnica mista / Foam, mixed media / Mousse, polyuréthane, techniques mixtes, 266 x 558 x 124 cm © Palazzo Grassi SpA. Foto: ORCH, orsenigo_chemollo.

Opening Punta Della Dogma

On June 6th 2009, Punta della Dogana, the new art center for contemporary art of the François Pinault Foundation, opens its doors after fourteen months of renovation entrusted to the Japanese architect Tadao Ando.

The first exhibition Mapping the Studio: Artists from the François Pinault Collection, curated by Alison M. Gingeras and Francesco Bonami, is shown simultaneously at Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi and is shaped in response to the particular atmosphere of each space.

Undisputed masterpieces of contemporary art by such figures as Jeff Koons, Sigmar Polke, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Cy Twombly, Takashi Murakami or Jake & Dinos Chapman are presented alongside pieces by emerging talents such as Matthew Day Jackson, Adel Abdessemed, Wilhelm Sasnal, Richard Hughes, Nate Lowman, Mark Bradford and Kai Althoff.
http://www.palazzograssi.it/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=81&Itemid=48&lang=en

Unique French Edition Of Erotic Classic Up For Sale, Mémoirs de Fanny Hill

Unique French Edition Of Erotic Classic Up For Sale

(Source Forbes)
A one-of-a-kind Fanny Hill book drips with provocative hand-painted watercolors.
An item in Bloomsbury Auctions' upcoming June 23 books and manuscripts sale in New York looks innocent enough. Estimated at $4,000-$6,000 and printed in Paris in 1887, it comes encased in a discreet cardboard box covered in handmade marbled paper in subtle tones of mauve, tan and pale blue. A bit too innocent, even.

Pull out the volume inside and you get a hint of the titillating content within. The brown leather cover is embossed in gold, with what is known as a "priapic" design: The four corners of the front cover each display a penis and scrotum with wings attached, encircled by a golden oval encased in a delicate, labial--or is it floral?--decoration.
This is Mémoirs de Fanny Hill, a French edition of the landmark erotic novel, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by English novelist John Cleland, first published in 1749. Fanny, of course, is the famously risqué story of an orphaned 15-year-old country girl and her adventures as a London working girl.

Multiple editions of the book have been released over the years, including Amazon's current $3.20 Kindle version, but the Bloomsbury specimen is a masterpiece of the tactile. Leather binding aside, its inside covers are panels of brown silk and marbled paper. Turning the pages of the story reveals 51 delicately painted watercolors, many tucked in the margins and corners of select pages. There are also 10 engraved plates. Read Article...

Bloomsbury Auctions is an International auction house dealing in books, prints, photographs, modern and contemporary prints, ...
http://www.bloomsburyauctions.com/index

ART SPONSORSHIP HONG KONG

ART SPONSORSHIP HONG KONG
( Source Artradar Asia)
At the end of last year Time Out noticed a new trend in Hong Kong, one with its own strange momentum. Property companies appeared to be competing with one another to sponsor the arts. When the Olympics surged into town in August 2008, the Sun Hung Kai Charitable Fund revealed their City Art Square in Sha Tin, a 190,000 square foot area developed in association with the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD), featuring 19 public art works by international and local artists (from Zaha Hadid to Freeman Lau). The project won a prestigious Cityscape Architectural Award, and brought a welcome dose of innovation to the New Territories.

There were also exhibitions in Causeway Bay as Wharf, owners of Times Square, launched a series of high profile exhibitions in the development’s public space.

Meanwhile, the Sino Group continued with their award-winning Art in Hong Kong campaign, sponsoring art projects and holding exhibitions in their properties.
Even The Link launched the Artsmart fair in Stanley.

But in December, Swire Properties dropped their arts bombshell.

Following their consistent support of the arts since the 1970s, they opened ArtisTree, an astonishing 20,000 square foot space in Taikoo Place dedicated to visual and performing arts.

The opening exhibition (showing until the end of January) was Dame Vivienne Westwood’s retrospective exhibition ‘A Life in Fashion’, organised in conjunction with London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. Just to rub it in the face of the LCSD, the Museum of Art had turned down the chance to hold the same exhibition several years ago. Read Article... http://artradarasia.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/property-companies-splurge-on-art-in-hong-kong-recent-trend/

At Paris' Pompidou Center, the year of the women

VIVE LA FEMME: Suzanne Valadon’s "La Chambre bleue" from 1923 is part of the exhibition.

At Paris' Pompidou Center, the year of the women
A long exhibition, 'elles@centrepompidou,' will feature hundreds of works by female artists only. Think of it as an alternate history.

Reporting from Paris -- Imagine a museum that boasts the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe. Now imagine that an intrepid female curator puts all the men's work in storage and fills the permanent collection galleries with a new version of 20th and early 21st century art history, the one that women created.

Would she emerge as a champion, finally proving that women artists are as good as -- or better than -- the guys? Or would she simply expose weaknesses of the museum's collection and the art itself?

"It's a risk," says Camille Morineau, who has organized “elles@centrepompidou,” opening Wednesday at the Pompidou Center. "Excluding men and showing only women is a revolutionary gesture of affirmative action. But the museum is avant-garde. It's part of the Centre Pompidou culture to do things differently. And we like a lot of drama. This is going to be dramatic in a big way."

A serious statement

By any definition, the installation of about 500 works by more than 200 women is an ambitious project -- a standout among museums' efforts to pay more attention to women. If not the first such exhibition in the world, as advertised, it's certainly the first on such a grand scale. And it will run for an entire year, with periodic additions and rotations of artworks.

As Stephanie Barron, senior curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, puts it: "When you have an institution of the scale and prestige of the Pompidou devoting its entire hang of its collection thematically to women artists, it's making a very serious statement."

Beginning with early 20th century paintings by French artist Suzanne Valadon and ending with works by up-to-the-minute figures such as Japan's Mariko Mori, Switzerland's Pipilotti Rist and England's Rachel Whiteread, "elles" will offer an international array of paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings, photographs, prints, videos, furniture and architectural models. Read Article...
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-elles24-2009may24,0,1787985.story

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Pour la première fois dans le monde, un musée présente ses collections au féminin. Cette nouvelle présentation des collections du Centre Pompidou est entièrement consacrée aux artistes-femmes du XXème siècle à nos jours.
Après Big Bang en 2005 et le Mouvement des Images en 2006-2007, elles@centrepompidou est la troisième présentation thématique des collections du Centre Pompidou. C'est l'occasion pour l'institution, qui a su constituer la première collection européenne d'art moderne et contemporain, d'affirmer son engagement auprès des artistes-femmes, toutes nationalités et disciplines confondues, de remettre les créatrices au centre de l'histoire de l'art moderne et contemporain du XXe et du XXIe siècles.
Des figures emblématiques telles Sonia Delaunay, Frida Kahlo, Dorothea Tanning, Joan Mitchell, Maria-Elena Vieira da Silva voisinent avec les grandes créatrices contemporaines, parmi lesquelles Sophie Calle, Annette Messager, Louise Bourgeois ont fait l'objet d'expositions monographiques récentes au Centre Pompidou.

Pluridisciplinaire, la programmation permet d'approfondir les domaines culturels que les femmes ont investis depuis un siècle, aussi bien dans la littérature que dans l'histoire de la pensée, de la danse ou encore du cinéma.
http://www.ina.fr/fresques/elles-centrepompidou/Html/PrincipaleAccueil.php
http://www.centrepompidou.fr/

'KRO Reporter': het Noortman imperium

'KRO Reporter': het Noortman imperium

Robert Noortman, de in 2007 overleden kunsthandelaar, was politieinformant, lid van een bende brandkastkrakers en is meermalen veroordeeld voor mishandeling.

Het tv-programma sprak oud-politiemensen die onderzoek deden naar Noortman en vond oude vonnissen van de rechtbank Maastricht. Van Robert Noortman werden onlangs schilderijen teruggevonden die in 1987 waren gestolen. De verzekeraar gaat er inmiddels vanuit dat de kunsthandelaar daar zelf achter zat.

In KRO Reporter beschrijven oud-politiemensen hoe Robert Noortman eind jaren zestig actief is in een bende brandkastkrakers. Volgens oud-hoofdinspecteur Jos Janssen had Noortman in de bende de rol van verkenner. "Hij reed rond, keek wat er waar te halen was. Welk type brandkast er stond en hoe de beveiliging van een pand in mekaar zat.". De latere kunsthandelaar staat eind jaren zestig regelmatig voor de rechter. In 1967 veroordeelt de rechtbank Maastricht hem tot een maand onvoorwaardelijke gevangenisstraf voor het mishandelen van twee politieagenten.

Aan zijn bestaan als bendelid komt in februari 1968 een einde wanneer Noortman een deal sluit met de leiders van het onderzoek naar de brandkastkrakers: officier van justitie Rolph Gonsalves en hoofdagent Gerrit Linzen. De laatste vertelt in Reporter dat Noortman aan hem een inbraak in een postkantoor bekent. Noortman wordt er niet voor vervolgd. In ruil verraadde, aldus Linzen, Noortman de verblijfplaats van een voortvluchtige brandkastkraker, de bekende Limburgse crimineel Anno Mink.

Begin dit jaar vond de Nationale Recherche acht schilderijen terug die in 1987 werden gestolen uit de galerie van Noortman. De verzekeraars, vertegenwoordigd door Julian Radcliffe van het Art Loss Register, gaan er inmiddels vanuit dat Noortman de inbraak vermoedelijk zelf in scene heeft gezet. Radcliffe spreekt van " zeer overtuigdend bewijs" dat de vermaarde kunsthandelaar mogelijk fraude heeft gepleegd. Naar nu blijkt verdacht ook de politie in 1987 Noortman van betrokkenheid bij de kunstroof. Zijn telefoon werd maandenlang afgeluisterd. Toen de verzekaar besloot te betalen bloedde het onderzoek, volgens een oud-rechercheur, dood.

Uitzending: 'KRO Reporter', zondag 7 juni 21.50 uur op Nederland 2.
http://tv-visie.be/inhoud/nederland/6juni2009/kro-reporter-het-noortman-imperium_29867/

Naakten Freddy Heineken bij Christie's onder de hamer

Een naakt van Jan Sluijters (1881-1957) dat in 2003 werd tentoongesteld in Rotterdam. Foto ANP

Naakten Freddy Heineken onder de hamer

(Bron: Het Parool)
AMSTERDAM - Veilinghuis Christie's brengt twee naakten uit de kunstcollectie van wijlen Freddy Heineken onder de hamer. Op 10 juni kunnen mensen bieden op een liggende roomblanke vrouw van Jan Sluijters en een exotische schone van Hendrik-Jan Wolter, liet het veilinghuis vrijdag weten.

Het schilderij Poserende Greet van Sluijters moet 180.000 tot 200.000 euro opleveren. De verwachte opbrengst van het doek Liggend Naakt van Wolter wordt geschat op 15.000 tot 20.000 euro. De twee werken maken deel uit van Christie's veiling van impressionistische en moderne kunst, waarbij ook topstukken van George Hendrik Breitner, Hendrik Willem Mesdag en Johannes Klinkenberg onder de hamer gaan.

De sensuele naakten van Jan Sluijters (1881-1957) brengen tegenwoordig hoge bedragen op. Zijn schilderijen van blote vrouwen golden aan het begin van de vorige eeuw nog als gewaagd. In 1911 werden twee Sluijters-naakten vanwege onzedelijkheid verwijderd uit het Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. (ANP)
http://www.parool.nl/parool/nl/22/KUNST/article/detail/246649/2009/06/05/Naakten-Freddy-Heineken-onder-de-hamer.dhtml

Abu Dhabi Gets a Sampler of World Art

Arts / Art & Design New York Times Permalink
Abu Dhabi Gets a Sampler of World Art
By CAROL VOGEL Published: May 27, 2009
The public on Tuesday got its first peek at some of the art that will fill the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Variations on Earth, exhibition Oosterkerk, Amsterdam

Variations on Earth, exhibition Oosterkerk, Amsterdam. Jule 5 - August 25 2009.

Art Amsterdam 2009 au R.A.I.

Art Amsterdam 2009 au R.A.I.

La foire internationale d’art contemporain Art Amsterdam (autrefois appelée ‘Kunst RAI’) se tenait du 13 au 17 mai derniers au R.A.I., dans la capitale néerlandaise. Pour marquer son 25ème anniversaire, les organisateurs avaient proposé à chacune des 120 galeries présentes de tenir une exposition solo ; en d’autres termes, chaque participant offrait un minimum de 25m2 de son espace à la présentation d’un artiste unique. Pour le visiteur cela résulta en une plus grande clarté et lisibilité, ainsi qu’une sensation accrue de découverte à chaque nouvel espace visité. De surcroît l’identification d’un artiste est plus aisée lorsque ses oeuvres sont concentrées en un lieu que lorsqu’elles sont disseminées parmi une multitude d’autres.

Aux côtés des galeries de premier plan des Pays-Bas étaient présents 31 exposants étrangers venus de 10 différents pays. La présence restait cependant majoritairement néerlandaise, permettant aux visiteurs de s’offrir un rapide aperçu de la création contemporaine dans ce pays. On y remarquait certains des poids lourds de la profession, avec par exemple 100m2 dédiés a Armando, et d’autres artistes reconnus comme Reiner Lucassen, ainsi que des valeurs montantes sur la scène internationale comme Robert Zandvliet. La tonalité dominante était cependant remarquablement jeune, une large place étant accordée à des talents émergents, comme Gijs van Lith (lauréat de l’art award 2009) ou la jeune Bonnie Severien.
Le ton se voulait donc résolument optimiste et tourné vers l’avenir. Et même si au fil des conversations, l’expectative voire l’inquiétude quand à la situation économique – le marché de l’art étant particulièrement touché – étaient palpables, la fréquentation, en augmentation de 50% par rapport à celle de l’année dernière, semble indiquer que le pari a été tenu.
http://www.artamsterdam.nl/

© O.R.Z. pour Kunstjaar 2009

An Eye for Landscapes That Transcend Nature

Art Review | Long Island| New York Times Permalink
An Eye for Landscapes That Transcend Nature
By BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO Published: May 24, 2009
April Gornik’s landscapes, at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, glow with mystery and grandeur.

“ Did art in Holland actually ceased to exist after Van Gogh” ?

“ Did art in Holland actually ceased to exist after Van Gogh” ?



Our broadcasting interview with Jose Luis Couoh Puc, a talented maya-impressionist
from Mexico highlighted the “whereabouts” about the present Dutch art culture.
The interview was held in Amsterdam, 14 May 2009.

Two people took the pleasure in interviewing Jose Luis, a painter from Merida,
Yucatan, who came to the Netherlands for an exhibition in Amsterdam Royal Gallery.

Jose Luis was invited to the Netherlands thanks to the positive criticism received
by a Dutch assistant-conservator who deeply admired his authentic impasta technique and of course the fact that his paintings received admiration of some art collectors (referring to the Mint Green exhibition, in New Delhi in this case) will most certainly, positively contribute to his success as being a one-of-a-kind maya impressionist with an impasta technique that cannot be copied by anybody anywhere.

We discussed with Jose Luis the present status of art in our society.
Remarkably he expressed that his visit to the Netherlands was more or less a small
cultural shock for him and so was the art he encountered upon his visit to some of our Amsterdam galleries.

When comparing the contemporary art that is being made in our society of today, he expressed to be, more or less, to be disappointed by what he called “seeds of our society that are reflected in the superficial fashion of the artist”.

“It is more like artists who are trying to catch the last trend or fashion instead of
An artist committed to creating art in his own unique style.

To cut a long story short: “the artist is no longer an artist in our society”. Just like with our present music in which stars are created by the media, many of the art that is produced has no quality label at all anymore he sadly and remarkably noticed.

May be it is because the artist is more engaged in tricks to sell a new painting instead of following his inner soul which should guideline and pave the way to creating a piece of art in his own unique style.

On the other hand Jose Luis was surprised to find such a glorious pastof the Dutch painters. Having studied art of course JoseLuis Couoh is well acquainted with the Dutch Masters of the Golden Age, but still seeing them for the first time and how they used to work says everything
about the glorious past of Dutch art.

It is most likely that this great difference in quality is nothing more than an exponential fact of the time we live in. In ancient times high society had rigid rules as to what to expect when they ordered for a painting and only few could pay….It is therefore sad to witness that a painter
such as Van Gogh, who was actually born 50 years earlier than he should have been, didn’t catch the admiration of the art audience at all that particular point of time. “Nobody was into Van Gogh at that point of time, as nobody could understand or see how unique his way of creating of art was by then: may be because of a lack of vision living in a time where people could only show off with technical perfect paintings from an established painter”.

Jose Luis Couoh Puc stressed the point that any artist in this world should not follow any trend at all and be just like Van Gogh, “because a genius only comes out when he already disposes of the talent, when he already has the basis and the capacity or skills to succeed in his own unique way”. May be it was because of this that people recognized that Jose Luis’ his exhibition in the Netherlands is no coincidence at all but only the result of the simple fact of his dedication
to being a true artist. Ïf the artist does not have this basis, he stated, then there is no point at all, that is why it is said to realize that for some people art died together with Van Gogh..

Jose Luis hopes that one day people will go back to their roots again and look at only one thing as before: the authencity of the artist, only this will save art in the long run….

Jose Luis will be in the Netherlands until the 16 th of May, day on which he will fly back to his beloved country: Mexico.

Thanks to the courtesy of the Comunidad de Yucatan Jose Luis Couoh was in the Netherlands and paid a visit to Musee de Orsay: “the museum to be for any impressionist who takes his work
seriously and wants to succeed”.



With courtesy to: Jose Luis Couoh Puc, joining in the next Exhibition at world artists July/August in Oosterkerk, Amsterdam. The exhibition Variations on Earth.
-------------------------------------------

“ el arte se murio con Van Gogh”



Entrevista con el impresionista Jose Luis Couh Puc de Mexico. Amsterdam 14 de Mayo 2009.
El 14 de Mayo tuvimos el placer de hacer una entrevista con Jose Luis Couoh Puc, pintor de Merida, Mexico quien esta actualmente exponiendo sus cuadros en la Galeria Royal de Amsterdam y que dentro de unos anos seguramente llegara a ser famoso gracias a tecnica “impasta” que queda reflejado en sus obras impresionistas/ expressionistas.

Jose Luis comento sobre su visita a Holanda y mas sobre el arte de la sociedad de hoy.
Cabe destacar que su primera obra durante la exposicion se vendio por mas de 9.000 pesos. Fue la obra de “Eva Luna” que llevo desde Mexico y se vendio inmediamente despues de su llegada a Holanda.

Jose Luis comento a su viaje a Holanda como si fuera: “ un pequeno shock cultural, “conociendo estos territorios de Europa tan avanzados y tan tecnificados”.
Al comparar el arte de Holanda con el de su pais materno, dijo que se hizo cargo de que ocurre algo en el arte de hoy como en la musica de hoy: “ los artistas tratan de seguir siempre la ultima tendencia en la sociedad sin preguntarse que base/calidad tiene su obra, por eso falta mucho la factura de la obra y el arte de hoy ya no es el arte de ayer, quizas por falta de tiempo del artista, quizas porque el artista ya no quiere ocuparse mas en hacer arte sino es mas bien un vendedor y por eso hace arte decorativo.

Fue notable durante la entrevista que al comparar la arte de Holanda de hoy y del siglo de oro (el tiempo de los grandes pintores como Rembrandt y Vermeer) ya no queda mucho de eso.

Antiguamente la alta sociedad tuvo gran demanda por obras finas y tecnicamente perfectas. Sin embargo, es notable que un artista como Van Gogh que querria expresar en sus obras una calidad sin precedentes, aunque no hubo nadie realmente interesado a comprar una obra de el: por una falta de vision de la sociedad del tiempo en que le toco vivir.


El artista consagrado no deberia seguir ninguna tendencia…segun Jose Luis Couoh Puc. ”Deberia tener su base y saber que hacer, como Van Gogh”; Seguramente es por eso que su exposicion en Holanda fue tan bien recibido con el publico y los expertos, quien se dieron cuenta que esta artista se compromete a hacer arte que viene de su mismo, que no trata de seguir ninguna tendencia, y por eso resulta tan dificil de creer “que el arte se murio con Van Gogh”.

“Espero que la gente vuelve un dia a conocer la autencidad otra vez que el artista persigue al hacer sus obras, y que vuelva a su base otra vez” dijo al final de la entrevista.

Jose Luis Couoh Puc esta en Holanda hasta el 16 de mayo 2009, dia en que vuelva a sus queridas tierras mexicanas. Agradecemos tambien la Comunidad de Yucatan por su visita a Holanda.