Urs Fischer - Tables, Heads, and Arms

Source: Gagosian Gallery

Continuously searching for new sculptural solutions, Fischer has built houses out of bread; enlivened empty space with mechanistic jokes; deconstructed objects and then replicated them; and transferred others from three dimensions to two and back again via photographic processes. He combines daring formal adventures in space, scale, and material with a mordant sense of humor. Reinvesting traditional art historical genres (still life, portraits, nudes, landscapes, and interiors) with an abundance of rich and surprising forms—such as cast sculptures and assemblages, paintings, digital montages, spatial installations, kinetic objects, and texts—he ceaselessly explores the intersection of art and everyday life.

The exhibition title, a collision of furniture and body parts, gives le corps exquis another turn of the screw. The works to which the title alludes are tables that combine large resin-coated photomontages with multicolored steel geometric bases. The jokey surrealist montages juxtapose images both found and manipulated—a pair of sausages, a cartoon snail, a graffiti-covered wall, an open mouth, a Hong Kong supermarket. Blurring the distinctions between photography, collage, sculpture, and furniture, the tables are objects both aesthetic and useful, filling the gallery with a presence that is at once visually arresting and socially convivial.

Urs Fischer was born in 1973 in Zurich, and studied at the Schule für Gestaltung, Zurich. His work is included in many important public and private collections worldwide. Recent major exhibitions include “Kir Royal,” Kunsthaus Zurich (2004); “Not My House Not My Fire,” Espace 315, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2004); “Mary Poppins,” Blaffer Gallery, Art Museum of the University of Houston,Texas (2006); “Marguerite de Ponty,” New Museum, New York (2009–10); “Oscar the Grouch,” The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut (2010–11); “Skinny Sunrise,” Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2012); and “Madame Fisscher,” Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2012), as well as the Biennale di Venezia in 2003, 2007, and 2011.

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Henry Moore: Late Large Forms - Gagosian Gallery (exhibition, 2012)

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Art market review - year 2012

by G. Fernández - theartwolf.com

Edvard Munch: The Scream
Painted in 1895
Sold for $119,922,500 / £73,921,284 / €91,033,826 at Sotheby's New York, May 2012
The sale of "The Scream" marked a new world record for any work of art ever sold at auction. A group of at least eight bidders jumped into the competition, and after more than 12 minutes, the lot was sold to Charles Moffett, bidding on behalf of an anonymous buyer (later revealed to be American businessman Leon Black). Simon Shaw, Senior Vice President of Sotheby's, described the work as “the defining image of modernity".

Mark Rothko: Orange, Red, Yellow
Painted in 1961
Sold for $86,882,500 / £53,884,526 / €66.899.525 at Christie's New York, May 2012
The monumental painting was described by Christie's as "the most important work by the artist on the market since "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)" sold for $72.8m in 2007". Although "Orange, Red, Yellow" has all you want from a Rothko, the "White Center" is a much better work.

Mark Rothko: No.1 (Royal Red and Blue)
Painted in 1954
Sold for $75,122,500 / £46,590,975 / €56.819.200 at Sotheby's New York, November 2012
Rothko again. According to Sotheby's, "(this) majestic canvas was one of eight works handselected by Rothko for his landmark solo show of the same year at the Art Institute of Chicago"

Ruyao Washer
Northern Song Dynasty
Sold for 207,860,000 HKD / $26,500,000 at Sotheby's Hong Kong, April 2012
This beautiful work -described by Sotheby's as "arguably the most desirable piece of Ru official ware remaining in private hands"- smashed the auction record for a Song ceramic bowl.

Henry Moore: Reclining Figure: Festival
Conceived in 1951
Pre-sale estimate of £3,500,000 - £5,500,000
Sold for £19,081,250 / $30,148,375 at Christie's London, February 2012
This bronze piece is now the most expensive British sculpture ever sold, surpassing Damien Hirst’s "The Golden Calf", sold 4 years ago for £10.3 million.

Figure of Isis
Egyptian, Dynasty XXVI, circa 664-525 B.C.
Pre-sale estimate of £400,000 - £600,000
Sold for £3,681,250 / $5,930,494 / €4,553,706 at Christie's London, October 2012
A new world auction record for an Egyptian work of art. The buyer was London dealer Daniel Katz.

Longmen head of a Bohisattva
Early Tang Dynasty, 7th century B.C.
Pre-sale estimate of $40,000 - $60,000
Sold for $992,500 at Sotheby's New York, September 2012
Several Asian works of art sold for spectacular prices in 2012, and this beautiful head of a Bohisattva -sold for 20 times its pre-sale estimate- is a good example.

Lega Mask
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Pre-sale estimate of $5,000 - $7,000
Sold for $362,500 at Sotheby's New York, May 2012
The work was once in the collection of Henri Matisse, and the "with possible alterations by Henri Matisse" statement in the catalogue surely helped to boost its final price.

Joan Miró: Peinture
Painted in 1933
Pre-sale estimate of £7,000,000 - £10,000,000
Unsold at Sotheby's London, February 2012
This classic work by Miró was unsold the day after "Painting-Poem" set a new auction record for the artist. Four months later, Sotheby's sold "Peinture (Étoile Bleue)" for a record £23.56 million ($36.9 million).

Jean-Honoré Fragonard: The Good Mother
Pre-sale estimate of $5,000,000 - $7,000,000
Unsold at Christie's New York, January 2012
This oval-shaped painting was the star of Christie's "The Art of France" auction. "The Good Mother" is one of Fragonard's most famous compositions (a slightly larger version hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston), but the lot failed to sell.

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Renaissance masterpieces at Christie's

December 21, 2012, source: Christie’s

Leading the sale is premier Florentine portraitist Agnolo Bronzino’s "Portrait of a Young Man with a Book", one of the most important Renaissance portraits remaining in private hands (estimate: $12,000,000 - 18,000,000). Recently rediscovered, the Portrait of a Young Man with a Book is among Bronzino’s earliest known portraits, datable to the time he was most closely associated with his teacher, Jacopo Pontormo, whose stylistic influence is clearly visible here. While the sitter’s identity cannot be confirmed, his social status and profession are alluded to. Elegantly attired and shown writing in a manuscript with a quill pen, he is clearly a cultivated man of letters. The seeming spontaneity of the sitter’s pose and direct gaze toward the viewer suggest that he may have been a close friend of the artist.

Fra Bartolommeo’s beautifully preserved "The Madonna and Child", still set in its original frame, is an important recent addition to the artist’s oeuvre (estimate: $10,000,000 - 15,000,000). Likely executed in the mid-1490s, early in Fra Bartolommeo’s career, this tondo-shaped panel depicts a tender moment as the Christ child eagerly grasps his mother’s veil, pulling himself up to receive a kiss.

Sandro Botticelli’s "Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist" is also among the highlights of the sale (estimate: $5,000,000 - 7,000,000). Intended for private devotional use, the work depicts a popular subject in Florence, as Saint John the Baptist was the patron saint of the city; his presence was likely intended to signal that the patron was a Florentine patriot. The tender sentiment between mother and child is here combined with an allusion to the Resurrection in the tomb-like structure carved with a classical relief just behind the figures. The diaphanous veil which falls over the Madonna’s head and shoulders signifies her purity, as this was the traditional head covering of unmarried Florentine women. The painting comes to market with a highly distinguished provenance, having been acquired in the early 1930’s from Lord Duveen by John D. Rockefeller. It remained in the Rockefeller family for some 50 years, and has more recently passed into a private New York collection, though it is still widely referred to as “the Rockefeller Madonna.”

Other highlights of the sale include Raphael’s remarkable drawing of "Saint Benedict receiving Maurus and Placidus" (estimate: $1,000,000 - 1,500,000); a "Portrait of Jacopo Boncompagni", executed in 1574 by Scipione Pulzone, previously exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (estimate: $1,500,000-2,500,000); and "The Temptation of Saint Anthony" by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch (estimate: $400,000 - 600,000).

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Portrait by Raphael sells for £18.5 million at Christie's London (news, 2007)

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Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925 - MoMA, New York

Source: MoMA, New York

Commemorating the centennial of the moment at which a series of artists invented abstraction, the exhibition is a sweeping survey of more than 350 artworks in a broad range of mediums—including paintings, drawings, prints, books, sculptures, films, photographs, recordings, and dance pieces—that represent a radical moment when the rules of art making were fundamentally transformed. Half of the works in the exhibition, many of which have rarely been seen in the United States, come from major international public and private collectors. The exhibition is organized by Leah Dickerman, Curator, with Masha Chlenova, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art.

Roughly one hundred years ago, a series of rapid shifts took place in the cultural sphere that in the end amounted to the greatest rewriting of the rules of artistic production since the Renaissance. Invented not just once, but by different artists in different locales with different philosophical foundations, abstraction was quickly embraced by a post-Cubist generation of artists as the language of the modern.

The exhibition takes an international perspective, and includes work by artists from across Eastern and Western Europe and the United States, such as Hans Arp (German/French, 1886–1966), Fernand Léger (French, 1881–1955), El Lissitzky (Russian, 1890–1941), Kazimir Malevich (Russian, 1879–1935), Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944), and many others.

Highlights of the exhibition include Pablo Picasso's "Woman with a Mandolin" (1910), Vasily Kandinsky's "Komposition V (Composition V)" (1911), Piet Mondrian's "Tableau No. 2 / Composition No. VII" (1913), Giacomo Balla's "Velocità astratta + rumore (Abstract speed + sound)" (1913-14), Kazimir Malevich's "Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying" (1915), and Fernand Léger's "Les Disques (The disks)" (1918).

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MoMA presents retrospective of Cindy Sherman (exhibition, 2012)

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Michelangelo's 'David-Apollo' travels to Washington

December 18, 2012, source: National Gallery of Art, Washington

The David-Apollo first visited the National Gallery of Art more than 60 years ago, as a token of gratitude for postwar aid and to reaffirm the friendship and cultural ties that link the peoples of Italy and the United States. The masterpiece's installation here in 1949 coincided with Harry Truman's inaugural reception. During the next six months the sculpture was seen by more than 791,000 visitors. In 2013, a new generation of visitors to the National Mall around the time of another inauguration—Barack Obama's second—will also have the chance to view the David-Apollo.

The ideal of the multitalented Renaissance man came to life in Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), whose achievements in sculpture, painting, architecture, and poetry are legendary. The subject of this statue, like its form, is unresolved. In 1550 Michelangelo's biographer Giorgio Vasari described the figure as "an Apollo who draws an arrow from his quiver," referring to the classical god of music and enlightenment, whose arrows could assail both terrible monsters and disrespectful mortals. A 1553 inventory of the collection of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, however, calls the work "an incomplete David by Buonarroti." By then it had entered the Palazzo Vecchio (the seat of government in Florence), joining several earlier sculptures of the biblical giant-killer David, a favorite Florentine symbol of resistance to tyranny.

In the David-Apollo, the undefined form below the right foot plays a key role in the composition. It raises the foot, so that the knee bends and the hips and shoulders shift into a twisting movement, with the left arm reaching across the chest and the face turning in the opposite direction. This spiraling pose, called serpentinata (serpentine), invites viewers to move around the figure and admire it from every angle. Michelangelo's conceptions of figures in this complex, twisting pose exerted a strong influence on contemporary and later artists. Although he brought the David-Apollo almost to completion, he left the flesh areas unfinished, as though veiled by a fine network of chisel marks that would have been filed off when the sculpture was completed. Least finished are the supporting tree trunk and the elements that would establish the subject: the rectangle on the figure's back that could become a quiver or sling, and the form under his right foot that could be a stone or the head of the vanquished Goliath.

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NGA acquires works by Moran, Whistler and others (news, August 2012)

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Art Basel Miami Beach 2012 - December 6-9, 2012

Source: Art Basel Miami Beach

Art Galleries, the main sector of Art Basel's Miami Beach edition, will feature 201 exhibitors. This year’s selection brings a strong showing of Modern material, further underlining the historical dimension of Art Basel Miami Beach. Joining a notable number of returning galleries, the sector includes many participants exhibiting at the show after a brief hiatus - Art: Concept, Konrad Fischer Galerie, Galeria Graça Brandão, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, Kewenig Galerie, Anthony Reynolds Gallery, Esther Schipper and Galerie Daniel Templon – joined by several first-time exhibitors Henrique Faria Fine Art, Galerie Michael Haas, Hammer Galleries, Hirschl & Adler Modern, Galerie Mehdi Chouakri, Craig F. Starr Gallery and Tornabuoni Art.

Art Nova offers younger galleries a platform to present artworks made in the last three years by two or three artists. Since its inception, the Art Nova sector has become known as a space of discovery for works fresh from the studio. With 40 galleries on display, the sector will feature work by more than 100 artists from across the world including juxtapositions such as: Yael Bartana, Tal R. and Tom Burr (Sommer Contemporary Art); Tania Pérez Cordova and Nina Beier (Proyectos Monclova); Becky Beasley and Simon Dybbroe Möller (Francesca Minini); Theaster Gates and Angel Otero (Kavi Gupta Gallery); John Gerrard, Michelle Lopez and Hans Schabus (Simon Preston); Brigida Baltar, Lucia Koch and Melanie Smith (Galeria Nara Roesler); Julião Sarmento and Leigh Ledare (Pilar Corrias); Dove Allouche, Jonathan Binet and Jessica Warboys (Gaudel de Stampa); and Hao Liang, Yangjiang Group and Zheng Guogu (Vitamin Creative Space).

Art Positions features a tight selection of 16 galleries, 12 of which did not exhibit at Art Basel in Miami Beach last year. An exciting platform for collectors, museum directors, critics and art enthusiasts to gain further insight into the work of individual emerging artists, this year’s presentation will feature many exciting young artists working internationally today

As part of Art Kabinett, select galleries admitted to the Art Galleries sector will present curated exhibitions in separately delineated spaces within their booths. The curatorial concepts for Art Kabinett are diverse, including thematic group exhibitions, art-historical showcases and solo shows for rising artists. As part of Art Video galleries will present works by some of the most exciting artists working in the media today. Organized in association with London's Artprojx, screenings of Art Video will be presented in two different locations: in SoundScape Park on the 7,000-square-foot outdoor projection wall of the New World Centre, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, and within five viewing pods inside the Miami Beach Convention Center. Art Public will turn Collins Park into a public outdoor exhibition space with large-scale sculptures and performances.

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Henry Moore - Late Large Forms - Gagosian Gallery

Source: Gagosian Gallery NY

A pioneer of modern British sculpture, Moore engaged the abstract, the surreal, the primitive and the classical in vigorous corporeal forms that are as accessible and familiar as they are avantgarde. His monumental sculptures celebrated the power of organic forms at a time when traditional representation was largely eschewed by the vanguard art establishment. The overwhelming physicality of their scale and forceful presence promotes a charged relation between sculpture, site and viewer. "Reclining Figure: Hand" (1979) is immediately identifiable as a human form despite its modulated stylization. The rounded, cloud-like body, which contrasts with a “knife-edge” head derived from bird bone, attests to Moore’s more exploratory impulses when compared to "Reclining Connected Forms" (1969), where he alludes to body parts using the vocabulary of mechanical components. "Large Two Forms" (1966) takes its shape from flints, whereas "Large Spindle Piece" (1974) reveals an interest in both natural and man-made objects.

It was Moore’s intention that these large-scale works be interacted with, viewed close-up, and even touched. Given their heft and mass, they are most commonly sited outdoors, subject to the effects of changing light, weather, and landscape. But seen within the pristine white environment of the gallery, the contrasting shapes, patinas and sheer scale of the sculptures are more keenly felt. Brimming with latent energy, their richly textured surfaces and sensual, rippling arcs and concavities can be seen to new effect.

This exhibition also includes a number of maquettes and found objects from Moore’s studio in rural Hertfordshire, which he called his “library of natural forms.” Crafted from plaster and Plasticine, these small-scale models were a vital step in realizing great sculptural schema. Fragments of bone, flint, and shell provided Moore with aesthetic inspiration: the curve and texture of animal bone was cast as the neck and head of Maquette for Seated Woman: Thin Neck (1960), and a piece of flint from the local sheep fields was used to create the open and pointed forms of Maquette for Spindle Piece (1968).

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Richard Serra at the Gagosian Gallery (exhibition, 2008)

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Constable, Gainsborough, Turner - the Making of Landscape

Source: Royal Academy of Arts

Since the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768, its Members included artists who were committed to landscape painting. The exhibition draws on the Royal Academy’s Collection to underpin the shift in landscape painting during the 18th and 19th centuries. From Founder Member Thomas Gainsborough and his contemporaries Richard Wilson and Paul Sandby, to JMW Turner and John Constable, these landscape painters addressed the changing meaning of ‘truth to nature’ and the discourses surrounding the Beautiful, the Sublime and the Picturesque.

The changing style is represented by the generalised view of Gainsborough’s works and the emotionally charged and sublime landscapes by JMW Turner to Constable’s romantic scenes infused with sentiment. Highlights include Gainsborough’s "Romantic Landscape" (c.1783), and a recently acquired drawing that was last seen in public in 1950. Constable’s two great landscapes of the 1820s, "The Leaping Horse" (1825) and "Boat Passing a Lock" (1826) will be hung alongside Turner’s brooding diploma work, "Dolbadern Castle" (1800).

To contextualise the landscape paintings of Constable, Gainsborough and Turner, a number of paintings by their 18th- century contemporaries Richard Wilson, Michael Angelo Rooker and Paul Sandby will be exhibited with prints made after the 17th- century masters whose work served as models: Claude, Poussin, Gaspard Dughet and Salvator Rosa. Letters by Gainsborough, Turner’s watercolour box and Constable’s palette will also be on display, bringing their artistic practice to life.

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Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement at the Royal Academy (exhibition, 2011)

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Raphael drawing breaks records at Sotheby's

December 6th, 2012, source: Sotheby's

Executed in black chalk, the highly important drawing from the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth depicts one of the key figures in Raphael’s "Transfiguration" – one of the greatest of all Renaissance paintings, which now hangs in the Vatican Museum, Rome. When Raphael died, his body was laid out in state in his studio with the "Transfiguration" hanging at his head. Head of a Young Apostle, is one of only three Raphael drawings of this calibre have appeared at auction in the last 50 years – each of which set an all-time record for an Old Master Drawing when they were sold.

"Head of a Young Apostle" was the headline work at tonight’s Evening Sale of Old Master & British Paintings Including Three Renaissance Masterworks from Chatsworth, which achieved £58,061,500 / $93,513,852 / €71,514,547 (est. £35.6-52.9 million). Also from The Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth, a flawlessly preserved 15th-century illuminated manuscript, "The Deeds of Sir Gillion de Trazegnies in the Middle East", was bought by the J. Paul Getty Museum for £3,849,250 (est. £3-5 million).

Other notable works at the auction include Jan Havicksz. Steen’s "The Prayer Before the Meal", from the collection at Sudeley Castle (est. £5-7 million), which sold for £5,641,250 ($9,085,797 / €6,948,347), a record for the artist; and Bernardo Bellotto's "Venice, the Grand Canal: looking south-west, from the Rialto Bridge to the Palazzo Foscari", sold for £3,289,250 ($5,297,666 / €4,051,380).

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Masterwork by Raphael sold at Christie's London (news, 2007)

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Aida Makoto: Monument for Nothing - Mori Art Museum

Source: Mori Art Museum

Aida Makoto ranks among the most closely followed contemporary artists in Japan today. Since his debut in the early 1990s, Aida Makoto has brought a cynical perspective to such subject matter as pretty young girls, war, and salarymen, touching upon modern and contemporary Japanese society in a stream of striking works. Bringing together over 100 works ranging from early pieces to his very latest work, this exhibition, the first in the world on such a scale, illuminates every aspect of Aida’s practice to date.

In a series of public programs to be held in conjunction with the exhibition, we home in on essentially what makes Aida Makoto a genius, scrutinized from diver se Japanese and international perspectives. In doing so we further hope that now, at a time when we are questioning anew the form and direction Japan should be taking, Aida’ s complex, multifaceted world – Japanese society in miniature – will serve as a medium through which a variety of discussions will arise.

Aida’ s twenty-year career as an artist coincides with the period during which Japan turned in on itself as the economy went through an extended slump following the collapse of the economic bubble, while its neighbors experienced rapid modernization and economic growth through globalization and multi-culturalism. Today, when serious questions are being asked once again of Japan’ s position and role in the international community and in Asia, is not Aida’ s willingness to seriously confront the peculiarities of his own culture – including social taboos, emasculated traditions, history begging for retrospection, and the coexistence of art and mass culture, which he places in front of us – something sorely required as we ponder this country’ s future? We hope that by surveying Aida’s works in the wider context of Japanese modern and contemporary art and its socio-political environment, viewers will also find this an opportunity to contemplate Japanese society and people at a deep psychological level, and the complexity of Japanese contemporary art.

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Tsang Kin-Wah at Mori Art Museum (exhibition, 2011-2012)

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Jonas Mekas at the Serpentine Gallery

Source: Serpentine Gallery

‘I want to celebrate the small forms of cinema, the lyrical forms, the poem, the watercolour, etude, sketch, portrait, arabesque, bagatelle and little 8mm songs. I am standing in the middle of the information highway and laughing, because a butterfly on a little flower somewhere just fluttered its wings, and I know that the whole course of history will drastically change because of that flutter. A super-8 camera just made a little soft buzz somewhere, on New York’s Lower East Side, and the world will never be the same.’
Jonas Mekas

This exhibition will survey Mekas’s work with moving images, poetry and sound, presenting a selection of film and video dating from the 1950s through to the present day. The show includes the world premiere of Mekas’s new feature-length film, presented as an immersive installation. Stills, film portraits of friends and family and ephemera will also punctuate the Serpentine’s spaces, offering a fascinating insight into Mekas’s life and work.

On his arrival in New York in 1949, Mekas bought his first Bolex camera and began to record brief moments of the world around him. He quickly became a central figure in the burgeoning arts community, alongside friends and collaborators such as Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg and film-makers Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren. A tireless champion of the new independent and avant-garde film movements, he wrote the ‘Movie Journal’ column in Village Voice, set up and edited Film Culture magazine with this brother Adolfas, and founded the Film-Makers’ Cooperative and Anthology Film Archives, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2011. Hero to successive generations of film-makers, from Martin Scorcese and Jim Jarmusch, for whom he is his ‘leader and mentor’ to Mike Figgis and Harmony Korine who cites him as a ‘true hero of the underground’, Mekas continues to exert a powerful influence on the film world and beyond.

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Thomas Schütte: Faces & Figures - Serpentine Gallery (exhibition, 2012)

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Edward Hopper's 'Cape Cod' sells online for $9.6M

November 29, 2012, source: Christie’s

On 28 November at the American Art auction in New York, an online bidder participating in the sale via Christie’s LIVE™ purchased Edward Hopper’s October on Cape Cod for $9,602,500 (£5,953,550 / €7,393,925), setting a new record for the most expensive item sold online at any international auction house. Christie’s previous house record of $3.3 million was established in 2010 with the sale of a rare Shang dynasty bronze wine vessel.

Since 2007, every category of fine art, antiques and collectibles sold in Christie's salerooms worldwide have been enabled for online bidding via Christie’s LIVE™, the company’s real-time multimedia platform. Since that time, participation in online bidding in Christie’s auctions worldwide has increased steadily; for the year 2011, 29% of Christie’s bidders transacted online, and the LIVE™ platform drew 25% more bids than the previous year. Earlier this year, Christie’s announced its further expansion into online-only sales of fine and rare wines, vintage couture, prints & multiples and special collections, offering clients additional online buying opportunities, no matter where in the world they may be located.

Elizabeth Sterling, Head of American Art at Christie’s in New York comments: “The sale of Edward Hopper’s October on Cape Cod has set a new world record for the most expensive item sold online at any international auction house, realizing $9.6 million, underscoring collectors’ commitment to securing works of exceptional quality by American masters."

Another work by Hopper, "Barn at Essex", a watercolor executed in 1929, was sold for $1,762,500. Georgia O’Keeffe's "Sun Water Maine", a pastel created in 1922, achieved $2,210,500.

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Hopper and Bellows lead Sotheby's auction, May 2012

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Masterpieces from the Prado at the MFAH, Houston

Source: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Portrait of Spain, exhibited in the second-floor galleries of the Audrey Jones Beck Building at the MFAH, will be installed according to themes within three distinct eras of Spanish history: 1550 to 1770; 1770 to 1850; and 1850 to 1900. Masterpieces by the leading painters of the day from each of the four centuries include works by Francisco de Goya, El Greco, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Jusepe de Ribera and Diego Velázquez. Artists who worked for the royal court and directly influenced the development of painting in Spain are also well represented, with superb paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo and Titian.

1) “1550–1770: Painting in an Absolutist State”
Outstanding portraits, mythological scenes, devotional paintings and still lifes by artists including El Greco, Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbarán exemplify the splendor of Spain’s Golden Age, when the empire was at the zenith of its global power, and offer a glimpse of courtly life under the expansionist Habsburg (1516–1700) and later the Bourbon (1700–1808) monarchs, who ushered in the Enlightenment to Spain. The use of portraiture and mythological themes as expressions of royal power; the role of religious imagery in painting; and the symbolism employed in still-life imagery to espouse the virtues of a civil society all factor in the development of Spanish painting during this time.

2) “1770–1850: A Changing World”
Against the tumultuous backdrop of the French Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars and France’s invasion of Spain; and the onset of a series of devastating civil wars, Spanish artists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries turned to chronicling a variety of levels of Spanish society. Preeminent among the artists during this unpredictable time was Francisco de Goya, who was painter to the courts of Charles IV and Charles V and who later in life graphically depicted the casualties of war and madness. In this exhibition, Goya’s work is represented by major Neoclassical portraits, including those of Manuel Silvela and the Marquesa de Villafranca, and an important selection of prints from the artist’s three extraordinary series: Los Caprichos, Los Disparates and Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War).

3) “1850–1900: The Threshold of Modern Spain”
Following the civil wars, the emergence of a fledgling Spanish national identity in the mid-19th century was supported by a period of relative economic prosperity. A move toward Romanticism brought with it a focus on genres that reflected the ideals of middle-class taste of the period, including landscapes, portraits, historical and religious scenes and nudes. Featured in this section are the works of Federico de Madrazo, known for his history painting and his portraits (and as a onetime director of the Prado); Eduardo Rosales, who looked back to Diego Velázquez in pursuit of a new Realism in Spanish painting; Mariano Fortuny, whose fascination with Orientalist themes reflected his exotic travels and international career; Aureliano de Beruete, one of the earliest Spanish painters to identify with the Impressionist movement; and Joaquín Sorolla, whose Realist paintings depicting the lives of fishermen and farmers explored the effects of sunlight and shadow and pushed Spanish painting toward the threshold of modernity.

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Titian and the golden age of Venetian Painting in Houston (exhibition, 2011)

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Matisse: In Search of True Painting

Source: Metropolitan Museum, New York

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was one of the most acclaimed artists working in France during the first half of the 20th century. The critic Clement Greenberg, writing in The Nation in 1949, called him a “self-assured master who can no more help painting well than breathing.” Unbeknownst to many, painting had rarely come easily to Matisse. Throughout his career, he questioned, repainted, and reevaluated his work. He used his completed canvases as tools, repeating compositions in order to compare effects, gauge his progress, and, as he put it, “push further and deeper into true painting.” While this manner of working with pairs, trios, and series is certainly not unique to Matisse, his need to progress methodically from one painting to the next is striking.

Matisse copied old master paintings as part of his academic training. He found much to admire on the walls of the Musée du Louvre yet was also receptive to the contemporary pictures he encountered in Parisian galleries. He was particularly intrigued by the work of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) and Paul Signac (1863-1935). Matisse borrowed stylistic elements from the two artists but was more interested in rendering his own sensations than subscribing to either of their theories.

Matisse’s stylistic exploration sparked the creation of pairs in which neither painting is entirely indebted to another artist. Upon his return to the fishing village of Collioure in the summer of 1906, he depicted a local teenager in a work that has all the hallmarks of his own vividly colored, expressive Fauvism ("Young Sailor I", 1906, Collection of Sheldon H. Solow). He then painted a second version of the composition on an identically sized canvas, this time employing flat color and deformation to produce a drastically different effect ("Young Sailor II", 1906, The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Unsure of his new direction, Matisse told friends that Young Sailor II had been painted by the local postman.

Over the next 10 years, Matisse approached his pairs in a variety of ways. He used a full-size cartoon and squaring to create his next major pair, life-size representations of a trio of nudes near the sea ("Le Luxe I", 1907, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; and "Le Luxe II", 1907-08, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen). Painting sessions with the sensual Italian model Laurette over a period of six or seven months in 1916-17 were instrumental in reorienting Matisse as he abandoned the restrictions inherent in painting in pairs and fully embraced larger series.

In the 1930s Matisse hired a photographer to document his progress on certain paintings. His model and studio assistant Lydia Delectorskaya recalled that the photographer was called in “when, at the end of a session, it seemed to Matisse he had come to the end of his work or he decided he had arrived at a significant stage….” In December 1945, six recent paintings by Matisse were displayed at the Galerie Maeght in Paris. Each was juxtaposed with large framed photographs documenting its evolution.

The theme of the studio interior —a consistent motif in Matisse’s oeuvre throughout his career—was addressed in Matisse’s final painted series, created from 1944 to 1948 at the Villa Le Rêve in Vence, France. The septuagenarian artist felt that a lifetime of work had prepared him to use color as a means of intimate expression. In the spring of 1948, he wrote to his son Pierre that his most recent paintings “impress everyone who has seen them because they are vivid and rich.” The critic Clement Greenberg was not alone in concluding that “Matisse is at the present moment painting as well as he ever has painted before, and in some respects perhaps, even better.”

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Before the Flood - Mesopotamian Art in Barcelona

Source: Caixaforum Barcelona

"Before the Flood. Mesopotamia, 3500-2100 BC" explores the image the Mesopotamians had of the world in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, which has mostly come down to us through the Bible, the Koran and Greek myths and texts. Rather than simply showing the treasures of the Sumerians, the exhibition speculates on the past and the way it has been interpreted by historians and archaeologists from different periods.

This is the first major exhibition dedicated to a period and a cultural space which were discovered in the late 19th century and are a cause for concern today. Recent wars, invasions and looting have devastated the fragile archaeological sites. The kind of building materials used (adobe and mud), the filtrations of water which have soaked the buildings since Antiquity and saltpetre have seriously damaged the foundations and walls.

Works of art and craft, jewels and ritual objects, texts and symbols show the way of understanding the world and society in the delta of the Tigris and the Euphrates: the divine origin of the city, the clash between the old gods and the new deities, the creation of humanity, the myth of the Flood, the reconstruction of the earth and the birth of culture as a consequence of a pact between gods and men. The Mesopotamian cities exerted a great influence over the Greek and Judaeo-Christian world and were decisive in the emergence of European civilisation. The exhibition pays attention to that connection through the myth of the founding of the first city and the survival of the legends of the Near East in biblical texts.

The exhibition has brought together a unique group of 400 archaeological pieces from leading international museums and collectors, among them the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire in Brussels, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Oriental Institute in Chicago, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

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