Claude Monet, Les Villas à Bordighera, Musée d'Orsay

LES VILLAS A BORDIGHERA, 1884, tableau de CLAUDE MONET, a été acquis par l'Etat pour le musée d'Orsay, Paris

L'annonce a été faite par la Ministre de la Culture et de la Communication, Catherine Tasca, dans un communiqué du 22 décembre 2000.

Cette toile a été peinte pour Berthe Morisot à Giverny en 1884, à l’issue d’un séjour en Ligurie, au bord du golfe de Gênes. Jalon essentiel de l’œuvre de Monet dont la palette se transforme radicalement à cette époque, elle représente le jardin Moreno que le peintre qualifiait de « paradis terrestre ». Sur la droite apparaît la villa édifiée vers 1880 par Charles Garnier, architecte de l’Opéra de Paris, pour le baron Bischoffsheim, et à l’arrière-plan la villa Sant’Ampelio, deux lieux familiers à l’artiste.

Les Villas à Bordighera de Claude Monet avait fait l’objet, en mai 1992, d’une interdiction de sortie du territoire français. Afin de permettre son maintien dans le patrimoine national, le groupe GAN s’était porté acquéreur du tableau et l’avait déposé au musée d’Orsay, aux termes d’un accord conclu pour dix ans avec l’Etat en application des dispositions prévues par la loi sur le mécénat culturel, qui permet aux compagnies d’assurances d’inscrire dans leurs provisions techniques les investissements réalisés pour l’acquisition d’oeuvres d’art.

Cette acquisition d'un important tableau de Claude Monet a pu être réalisé grâce à une importante participation du Fonds du Patrimoine et au concours de mécènes privés.

Ikuko Tsuchiya & Marc Newton, 2000 winners of the Jack Jackson Award

Ikuko Tsuchiya & Marc Newton
2000 winners of the Jack Jackson Award

The 2000 winners of the Jack Jackson Award are Ikuko Tsuchiya who took a Master of Art in Photography at Nottingham Trent University and Marc Newton who has just completed a BA in Fine Art at the London Guildhall University specialising in photography. Ikuko  Tsuchiya received £1,409 towards her photographic documentation of therapeutic community life in Botton Village, North Yorkshire, home to UK adults with learning difficulties and co-workers from all over the world. Marc Newton received £242 for his project on Bondway, a London housing shelter for homeless men.

The two winners are presenting their work to members of the photographic and imaging industry and trade press on 16 January 2001 at the Bayer Conference Centre (courtesy of Agfa Geveart), Stoke Court, Stoke Poges, Slough.

The work will also be on display at Focus on Imaging, NEC, Birmingham from 25 February - 28 February 2001 (courtesy of Mary Walker Exhibitions Ltd).

IKUKO TSUCHIYA

Ikuko Tsuchiya has recently completed an MA Photography at Nottingham Trent University

Her project concerned photographic documentation of therapeutic community life and the representation of what she considers important in order to live as a human being in aspects of both Subjective Interpretation and Objective Observation.

The project is based on the lives of the inhabitants of Botton Village, North Yorkshire, which is home to about 160 adults with learning difficulties from the UK and over 140 of the co-workers from all over the world. They look after their own homes, run farms, market gardens, a food centre and bakery.

The village was founded by the Austrian Dr Karl Konig in 1955 as a Christian community run according to the principles of the Austrian philosopher, Rudolph Steiner.

Ikuko Tsuchiya was not only interested in recording the appearances of those who live in the community and have mental handicaps as a photographic objective, she sought out their inner element as human beings and tried to learn the source of humanity through observation which is complicated in our life in the present.

In fact, her first visit prompted her resolution to come to Britain again. Perhaps, it reawakened her awareness of what humanity is, by allowing her to make comparisons with her experiences of life in Japan where she grew up.

She has applied Subjective Interpretation in order to reflect her viewpoints concerning what she thinks is important to life. She believes this interpretation is apparent in the selection of people and their surrounding situation which became her photographic objective. She selected the people through her contacts with the community life.

An aspect of Objective Observation reflects the camera viewpoint as machinery for developing her subjectivity objectively. The objectivity is in the photographic representation of her subjective experience. In addition, selecting and using photographic equipment was also interdependent with the representation of her subjectivity. She used medium format camera (6x7) and black & white film.

Ikuko Tsuchiya developed her proposed project from these experiences and a pursuit of what she considers to be the important things in life and she regarded this as a serious and meaningful project.

MARC NEWTON

Marc Newton has recently graduated with a BA in Fine Art at the London Guildhall University where he specialised in photography.

Marc Newton works voluntarily at an organisation called 'Bondway'. Bondway's outreach project travels the streets of London and takes in homeless men they feel are more vulnerable living rough. He has got to know the residents in the shelter and it has opened his mind to the neglect the homeless receive. The people of the shelter have many problems from alcoholism to ill mental health and Marc decided he wanted to reflect the feel of Bondway and it's powerful characters through Photography.

The shelter agreed to allow him to take photographs and he has gained some potent imagery, from photographs of people who can no longer control their own body to images of people's attempts to take their own life. Working with Bondway and meeting the people within has opened his mind and created a different perspective of the homeless. He sees these people as very strong characters who have simply come across some kind of misfortune in their life that has put them where they are today.

The general public is used to seeing the homeless in doorways or on street corners, just walking by them as if they're not there. Marc Newton states: 

"The fact is that these people do exist and all have their own special personalities and are just as equal as the people ignoring them. The photographs bring these characters to the surface and create an essence of Bondway's atmosphere showing these people as they are in their own natural environment, something that we are not used to seeing. It is a touching sight and I hope that through the opportunity to show this work to the public, maybe the next time they walk past a homeless person in a doorway, their view of them may be different or at least they will not be ignored."

PHOTO IMAGING COUNCIL

Orbital House, 85 Croydon Road

Caterham, Surrey CR3 6PD

www.pic.uk.net

James Welling, Galerie Nelson, Paris

James Welling 

Galerie Nelson, Paris 

16 décembre 2000 - 27 janvier 2001 

La galerie Nelson présente les dernières oeuvres de la série des New Abstractions du photographe américain JAMES WELLING ainsi que sa nouvelle série des Mystery Photographs.

La série des New Abstractions, commencée en 1998, est composée de photographies de format vertical où s’entrecroisent des bandes noires plus ou moins nombreuses sur un fond uniformément blanc. Le rendu est très contrasté. Cette série a été réalisée à partir de photogrammes (1) de petit format qui ont été digitalisés puis agrandis pour aboutir à des tirages argentiques de grand format. Afin d’obtenir le photogramme original, des bandes de papier bristol ont été jetées et arrangées sur des feuilles de papier photo puis exposées à la lumière. James Welling explique au sujet de ces photographies : “J’ai décidé d’inverser la tonalité des images parce que je les vois comme des lignes noires sur un champ blanc lumineux, comme lorsqu’on regarde le ciel à travers la charpente d’une maison en cours de construction”. Avec ces photographies, James Welling poursuit son travail sur la lumière, abordé avec la série des Light Sources (1995-1998) qui ont été présentées à la galerie en 1998. Les New Abstractions ont été exposées pour la première fois en 1999 au Sprengel Museum de Hanovre à l’occasion du prix pour la photographie de la DG Bank, remis à James Welling. Elles sont aujourd’hui présentées pour la première fois en France.

Parallèlement aux New Abstractions, James Welling a commencé cette année une nouvelle série : les Mystery Photographs également exposées pour la première fois en France. De la même façon, des bandes traversent l’espace monochrome. Mais cette fois, la photographie est floue, colorée, moins contrastée. Dans cette série, il expose successivement le papier photo à des faisceaux de lumières colorées, faisant apparaître des striures de couleur au travers de la surface monochrome. Des formes abstraites, fugitives et mystérieuses affleurent la surface qui opère comme un voile trouble. 

(1) Le photogramme est une photographie faite sans appareil photo, en plaçant des objets, des mains ... sur du papier photo puis en les exposant à la lumière. Les objets sont en général directement placés sur le papier et les formes obtenues sont nettement définies.

GALERIE NELSON

40 rue Quincampoix, 75004 Paris

www.galerie-nelson.com

Tatsuo Miyajima at Luhring Augustine, New York

Tatsuo Miyajima: Totality of Life
Luhring Augustine, New York
December 16, 2000 – January 27, 2001

Luhring Augustine presents an exhibition of new work by Tatsuo Miyajima, titled “Totality of Life.”  This major exhibition consists of three installations, each concerned with illustrating concepts of human relations with time and space. The largest installation in the main gallery, called Floating Time, is a site where the viewer can actively perceive time, as counting digital numbers literally float through space, interacting with the installation and the viewer. 

As Tatsuo Miyajima has explained in an artist statement, “Oriental philosophy never recognized ‘time’ independently. ‘Time’ is understood as being in relation with space and environment. The notion of ‘time’ is primarily realized by human beings and life. In the East, life is understood as the repetition of birth and death. Thus, the abstract concept of ‘time,’ parallel to life with continuous transformation, is accordingly unconditional with neither a start nor an end…The ‘time’ shown in my [work] simultaneously represents the existence of the human being and life itself.  My counters indicate 1 through 9 and not ‘0,’ then total blackout (which symbolizes death) and repeat the counting process again.  It undoubtedly suggests the repetition of life.”

Tatsuo Miyajima’s work has been internationally collected and exhibited. Most notably Miyajima was chosen to represent the Japanese pavilion at the 1999 Venice Bienniale.  His work can be found in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art, the San Francisco MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, the MCA Chicago as well as many others.

LUHRING AUGUSTINE
www.luhringaugustine.com

Glynn Williams, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London

Glynn Williams: Echo
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
December 15, 2000 - January 27, 2001

Glynn Williams’ first london exhibition for 5 years features two remarkable new sculptures. The first is a massively oversized, fragmented still life of bottle, jug and cups. Carved in Portland stone the piece covers an area of more than 3 metres square and rises to nearly 3 metres.

The second piece “Echo” is an exact full scale replication of the stone piece; cast in paper. This material, which is new to Glynn Williams, has starkly contrasting qualities to the stone sculpture and give the piece a ghost-like fragility, a physical and visual lightness.

The two pieces fill the gallery space and due to their scale appear like ancient monumental ruins.

Although Glynn Williams is predominantly known as a sculptor of the human figure he has used the image of the still life throughout his career. This exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue which includes the works in the show as well as examples of previous still-lifes dating back to the 1960’s. Simon Watney in his catalogue essay points out the associative similarity between the new still-lifes and grouped figures and in many of the still life works there is evidence of human presence or in some cases such as Still -life with Hat Coat and Shoes, absence. Glynn Williams has said himself “The human body is the centre of everything in art and most else”

Glynn Williams is professor of sculpture at the Royal College of Art. He has written extensively on sculpture over the past 30 years and has exhibited all widely. His work is in many private and public collections including the Tate Gallery.

BERNARD JACOBSON GALLERY
14A Clifford Street, London W1X 1RF
www.jacobsongallery.co.uk

Dada and Surrealist Art from Arturo Schwarz Collection at Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Dreaming with Open Eyes
Israel Museum, Jerusalem
December 22, 2000 - June 2001

On december 2000, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem presented its first comprehensive exhibition of the Vera, Silvia and Arturo Schwarz Collection of Dada and Surrealist Art.

Dreaming with Open Eyes includes over 300 works by leading artists including Duchamp, Man Ray, Ernst, Breton, and Goya. Donated in 1998, this unique collection of over 750 works of art by some 200 artists were on view at the Israel Museum from December 22, 2000 through June 2001.

The gift of the Arturo Schwarz Collection, together with a library of over one thousand related books, pamphlets and artifacts donated in 1991, has transformed the Israel Museum into the largest repository in the world of Dada and Surrealist art and a global center for the study and display of these movements. "Dreaming with Open Eyes" takes advantage of Schwarz's scholarly insight to reveal the importance of the works on view, and incorporates his personal approach to the material in the exhibition. Paintings, drawings, sculptures, ready-mades, photographs and prints are complemented by unique items from the Museum's Dada and Surrealist library of art periodicals, documents, letters, and artists' books.

The presentation in Jerusalem will be followed by a major international tour. The exhibition will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts, February - April 2002; the Art Gallery of Ontario, June - September 2002; and a third North American venue; and the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, and conclude with two venues in Japan. James Snyder, Director of the Israel Museum states: "Our Museum has a long history of important holdings in Modern Art and particularly in the fields of Surrealism and Dada. The Arturo Schwarz gift in 1998, on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the State of Israel, consolidates our position as a world center for these two movements, so central to the aesthetic and intellectual progress of the 20th century. We are proud that, in "Dreaming with Open Eyes", we are able to expose the full riches of these holdings and then to share them on tour in North America and in Japan."

Dada
The Dada movement emerged in Europe and the United States in reaction to the horrors of World War I. This enclave of artists rebelled against artistic convention and sought to subvert the existing social and political order. Artists such as Marcel Janco, Raoul Hausmann, Max Ernst, and Francis Picabia represent this movement through works exemplify the key tenants of Dada: the accidental, the absurd, protest, and criticism.

Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray
The revolutionary work of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray had a profound influence on Dada and Surrealist artists and was central to later trends in twentieth-century art. Duchamp and Man Ray met in New York in 1915, and from that time on were active, both independently and jointly, in avant-garde circles in New York and Paris. Arturo Schwarz met the two artists in the 1950's and demonstrated his appreciation for their work by arranging exhibitions, acquiring dozens of works, and composing scholarship on them. Seventy works by Man Ray and Duchamp reflect their fertile imaginations, and their preoccupation with humor, playfulness, and eroticism.

Forerunners of Surrealism
The Arturo Schwarz collection includes a sizable body of pre-Surrealist work, which, like the Surrealist movement that would follow, demonstrates a timeless interest in dreams, the supernatural, and the irrational. This portion of the collection includes paintings, prints, and drawings from the 16th through the 20th centuries by artists such as Durer, Goya, Moreau, and Redon, along with tribal masks and artifacts from Africa, Oceania, and North America. Surrealism The works of dozens of Surrealist artists from the 1920's to the 1980's are arranged in the exhibition according to visual and thematic criteria. The ideological platform of the Surrealist movement, formulated by Andre Breton in the 1920's, called for a new way of seeing. Disappointed by modern Western culture, many artists and writers had been inspired by Dada and had adopted a nihilist or anarchic stance. But Surrealism did not simply advocate subversion, it called for a change in values. The movement sought to stimulate the imagination, to expand the limits of awareness, and to tap into a non-rational, subconscious psychological realm, like that revealed in dreams and madness. Among the artists represented are some of the members of the original circle of the Surrealist movement in the 1920's and 1930's, such as Andre Breton, Joan Miro, Yves Tanguy, Andre Masson, and Max Ernst. Women artists including Claude Cahun, Remedios Varo, Kay Sage, and Dorothea Tanning are prominently featured among the Surrealist group on display, many of which achieved central standing in the canon of 20th century art history.

The Library
The final component of the exhibition is drawn from the Museum's extensive library of Dada and Surrealist materials, including a display of portraits of Surrealist artists and writers immortalized by their photographer and painter colleagues, as well as a selection of original Dada and Surrealist literary documents. The collaboration between artists revealed through these portraits and publications demonstrates the spiritual bond that existed among members of the movement.

About Arturo Schwarz
Scholar and collector Arturo Schwarz was born in 1924 in Alexandria, Egypt to Jewish parents. In his youth he was very active in clandestine political circles and was arrested a number of times prior to his expulsion from Egypt in 1949. Settling in Milan in the early 1950's, he opened a publishing house and a bookstore that evolved into the Schwarz Gallery, which closed in 1975. The gallery held exhibitions of the best Dada and Surrealist artists and of contemporary artists from throughout the world. Simultaneously, Schwarz wrote poetry, published scholarly books including a catalogue raisonne of the works of Marcel Duchamp, gave lectures, and organized international Dada and Surrealist exhibitions. His intense involvement in the Surrealist movement and his personal acquaintance with many of its members has made him a leading authority on its history. "Dreaming with Open Eyes" is curated by Tamar Manor-Friedman and is accompanied by a comprehensive 250-page catalogue, which includes an illustrated inventory of the works in the Arturo Schwarz collection in the Israel Museum.

Adrian Piper, Paula Cooper Gallery, NYC - Work From The Color Wheel Series

Adrian Piper

Work From The Color Wheel Series

Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

November 30, 2000 – January 6, 2001

The Paula Cooper Gallery presents an exhibition of new work by Adrian Piper. This work is on view at 521 West 21st Street.

Entitled The Color Wheel Series, First Adhyasa: Annomayakosha, this exhibition is the first segment in a series of five installments. The color wheel refers to a device by the same name used for the display of the Pantone Matching System®, an international “color language” employed in printing and publishing. Upon completion of the project, all 1,010 Pantone Colors will be distributed among a total of 335 images in print, reproduction, or website form.

Adrian Piper integrates the spectrum of the Pantone System with tenets of Hindu Vedantic philosophy in order to examine color as an “illusory superimposition,” or adhyasa. According to Vedanta, ultimate reality is concealed beneath five koshas, layers of illusion which must be peeled away in order to attain self-knowledge.

The show consists of 24 light-jet photographic prints measuring approximately 56 by 36 inches each. Arced at their tops, these prints resemble Eastern mandalas, featuring the Hindu god Shiva inside a Fire Wheel, an excerpt of a Vedantic text in Sanskrit, and three human figures, or “Acting Heads” who “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” (a recurring motif in Piper’s work). Directly below Shiva’s wheel is a Target Wheel aimed at the central figure of the “Acting Head” paradigm.

In a systematic fashion, the skin color of each Acting Head varies throughout the series, following a procedure whereby each of the three Heads is assigned one specific Pantone Color. As a result, each print is unique, with no Pantone Color repeated more than once.

Adrian Piper thus establishes a specific methodology through which the viewer can investigate the subjective, constructed nature of color. The imagery of Eastern philosophy and religion operates not only on a formal level but also as a conceptual device to reveal the superimposition on the self of illusions such as caste, color, and status.

PAULA COOPER GALLERY

521 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10001

www.paulacoopergallery.com

A Growing Presence: Art by African Americans at PAFA - Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia

A Growing Presence: Art by African Americans 

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia 

November 22, 2000 - February 25, 2001 

This exhibition examines the Academy's historical commitment to collecting the work-paintings, sculptures, and graphics-of African American artists. By focusing on the earliest and latest of such acquisitions, the exhibition provides a measure of the growing presence of art by African Americans in the Academy's permanent collection.

A sculpture by Richmond Barthé and a painting by Horace Pippin (both acquired in 1943) were the first such pieces to enter the collection and are two of three historical works on display that provide a starting point for this review of the Academy's collecting practice. The most recent acquisitions include a group of five objects generously given by Harold A. and Ann R. Sorgenti during the fall of 1999. This cache, which includes works by Romare Bearden, Beverly Buchanan, and Faith Ringgold, is the first body of work to be officially accessioned into the collection as part of the newly established Harold A. and Ann R. Sorgenti Collection of Contemporary African American Art.

African American artists have made valuable contributions to the history of art in the United States since the country's formation. However, not until the protests of the late 1960s, when African Americans-as well as women, Latinos, and other disenfranchised groups-protested their exclusion by establishment museums, did the art world begin to take seriously African American artistic accomplishment. Boasting the largest number of paintings by Pippin of any public collection, and a promised gift of more than fifty works by important contemporary figures such as Benny Andrews, Sam Gilliam, Jacob Lawrence, Howardena Pindell, Betye Saar, and Raymond Saunders, the Academy is, and has long been, an important proponent of African American art. This special installation coincides with the nation's annual February celebration of Black History Month. 

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Broad and Cherry Streets, Philadelphia, PA 19102

www.pafa.org

Women and Modernity: In and Around German Expressionism, LACMA, Los Angeles - Selections from the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies and Los Angeles Public and Private Collections

Women and Modernity: In and Around German Expressionism—Selections from the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies and Los Angeles Public and Private Collections

LACMA, Los Angeles

November 24, 2000 – April 8, 2001

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Women and Modernity: In and Around German Expressionism—Selections from the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies and Los Angeles Public and Private Collections, an exhibition that explores the changing role of women at the turn of the last century through approximately 70 works including painting, sculpture, woodcuts, lithographs, and drawings. This exhibition examines the shift in German Expressionist art as women left the cocoon of private residences, salons, and balls and emerged on the streets of the modern city, where many now held jobs and pursued careers.

The exhibition is divided into four main sections: 

The first focus of the exhibition is The Modern City, which portrays women in the burgeoning new metropolises. This changing role is seen in Two Women (1911–1912 ) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Germany, 1880–1938). The subjects of this painting have angled forms that reflect the jagged shapes of the city around them, lending an unsettling note to a commonplace outing. Women in the city were also portrayed as spectators or performers in the theater, as in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner' s woodcuts Theaterloge (Theater box, 1909) and Tänzerin mit gehobenem Rock (Dancer with lifted skirt, 1910).

The second section, Nudes, demonstrates how nature and women were rendered using new styles and approaches. Representative of the Brücke artists’ collective style is the color woodcut by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Bathers Tossing Reeds (1910), as well as works created by Erich Heckel and Max Pechstein between 1910 and 1912. These portrayals of women surrounded by nature feature different poses than those of earlier depictions and stand in sharp contrast to the urban women in section one. Works in this section also show how the artists studied and imitated the nudes of Old Masters, which often emphasized the beauty of the female form. In works such as Untitled (Seated woman) (1914) by Egon Schiele (Austria, 1890–1918), the female body is portrayed as beautiful. This section also includes two erotic etchings of disrobing women by Lene Schneider Kainer, an artist largely forgotten by history.

The third section is Photographic Portraits. Faces in German Expressionist prints are often reduced to minimal features, the face of a nude often delineated only by its contours. Photographic portraits in this section provide the missing features and facial expressions and they further explore the differences between women as subjects and women as artists. For example, Lotte Jacobi’s Self-portrait (c. 1930) is a record of a woman who proudly presents herself as a professional photographer. Her hand holds the camera release; the cable visibly connects her to the tool of her trade.

The last section, Women Portray Women, focuses on the works of three women artists: Gabriele Münter (Germany, 1877–1962), Käthe Kollwitz (Germany, 1867–1945), and Paula Modersohn-Becker (Germany, 1876–1907). Although these artists encountered various degrees of success in their time, each participated in and uniquely inflected the artistic vocabularies of modernity.

This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036

www.lacma.org

Ulrike Palmbach, Michael Kenna, Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco - Inertia, an installation & Other Works - Recent Works

Ulrike Palmbach: Inertia, an installation & Other Works 

Michael Kenna: Recent Works 

Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco

November 15 - December 23, 2000

The STEPHEN WIRTZ GALLERY presents exhibitions of new work by ULRIKE PALMBACH and recent photographs by MICHAEL KENNA.

In the main gallery is exhibited the work of German-born artist, ULRIKE PALMBACH. The objects that Palmbach creates exist at the intersection of the familiar and the strange, the humorous and the tragic, the promising and the ominous. Palmbach zeroes in on ordinary daily peculiarities by using mundane raw materials such as felt blankets and twine in an extra-ordinary way.

"Inertia" is a large installation comprised of an abundance of felt objects that appear to have been left by a receded river current. Made from layers of blankets, the elements are uniformly rounded, as if worn by incessant spinning and tumbling. Their immobility evokes a yearning for the motion which shaped them, yet also defines their place at rest.

ULRIKE PALMBACH (b.1963, Stuttgart, Germany) received her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1989. Her work has been included in several exhibitions including the "1997 Bay Area Now show" at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

In the small gallery are photographs by MICHAEL KENNA. Kenna's signature style is capturing simple beauty with black & white photography by combining formal aesthetics with elements of drama and a sense of stillness and isolation. While his photographs are quiet and meditative, they are equally rebellious. Michael Kenna presents an intelligent interpretation and presentation of nature juxtaposed with the man-made.

This exhibition also features Michael Kenna's recent photographs taken in such places as Easter Island, Russia, France, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Also included are recently printed images of cooling towers in England.

MICHAEL KENNA (b.1953, Widnes, Lancashire, England) will have a solo exhibition, "Night Work", opening this winter at the Friends of Photography. A book of the same name was recently published by Nazraeli Press in conjunction with this exhibition. Michael Kenna's photographs are in many museum collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Denver Art Museum.

STEPHEN WIRTZ GALLERY

49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

www.wirtzgallery.com

Leica Camera AG Calendar 2001

Leica Camera AG has printed an impressive black-and-white wall calendar entitled 'My point of View' for the year 2001. The high-quality prints feature the work of six internationally successful Leica photographers, who have each chosen two of their favorite photos expressing personal points of view. The range of subjects is wide, extending from journalistic photos of Siberia and the Kosovo to nude photography and portraits of world-famous models. A tribute to the photographic artists who use their Leica camera with virtuosic creativity. Owners of this special calendar will be able to share their enjoyment of it as all the pictures reappear on the last page of the calendar as detachable postcards. The calendar is 43 x 59 cm in size, and is available at Leica stockists. The following photographers have contributed to the 2001 calendar: Bryan Adams Bryan Adams' photographic career began 3 years ago when he had the idea of taking the photos for his CD covers himself. Today he photographs famous celebrities from Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell to Tina Turner for magazines like Vogue, Marie Claire or MAX. Adams works in natural light and adapts to the particular situation, turning stars into people. Claudine Doury ...began taking photographs in 1989. Her first highly acclaimed piece of work was a report on the nurses' strike in Paris. Since the early Nineties she has focused on Russia and its people, receiving the Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 1999 for her photographic essay on nomads in Siberia. She is a member of the VU agency and lives - unless she's away on a project - in Paris. Claus Bjorn Larsen ...Born in 1963, Larsen is the shooting star among contemporary press photographers. Having worked for the renowned Danish daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende since 1996, he recently caused an international stir with his reports on the Kosovo. He won several awards for his sensitive pictures in 1999, including a first prize of World Press Photo, the Visa d'Or and the Fuji European Award. Maik Scharfscheer ...Born in 1964, Maik Scharfscheer lives in Wetzlar. Apart from his main activity as industrial photographer (customers include Renault, Nike, Davidhoff und Sony) he also works on subjects of his own choice. He took his close-ups while staying in Marrakesch: without a lot of technical equipment, but with feeling for the people he was photographing. Striking portraits in black-and-white. Pall Stefansson ...studied photography in Sweden and now lives in Iceland as a freelance photographer. He works regularly for newspapers such as the Iceland Review or the ship magazine Atlantica. He is also interested in landscapes. Stefansson takes photos in both color and black-and-white. He has called his latest cycle "Earth/Fire/Water/Air". A tribute to the elemental powers of nature. Adolf Zika ...was born in 1972. He lives and works as a freelance photographer in Prague, specializing in fashion and beauty. He takes photographs for Versace and Hermés or Playboy. Most of all, Zika likes working in a natural environment. His pictures radiate joie de vivre and are the expression of a more natural treatment of the human body and eroticism. His choice of black-and-white film is also quite in keeping with the modern trend. Last update: 08-2009

Julius Shulman & Richard Neutra, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York - Modernism Defined

Modernism Defined: Julius Shulman & Richard Neutra
Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York
November 11, 2000 - January 6, 2001

Yancey Richardson Gallery announces the opening exhibition at their new Chelsea gallery, "Modernism Defined: Julius Shulman & Richard Neutra". The exhibition is comprised of an extensive selection of vintage photographs of important structures by Richard Neutra, one of the most highly acclaimed architects of the 20th century. Julius Shulman, widely recognized as one of the most important photographers of modernist architecture, took his first architectural image of a Neutra building in 1936. Neutra's enthusiastic response to the photographs helped launch Julius Shulman's career and the two continued to work together for the remainder of Richard Neutra's life. Julius Shulman ultimately photographed 90% of what Richard Neutra built and is credited with interpreting and exporting the ideas of modernism to the rest of the world through his images.

The exhibition celebrates Julius Shulman's 90th birthday and coincides with the release by Taschen of Richard Neutra - Complete Works, a definitive volume on Neutra's work in a large-scale limited edition book, illustrated primarily with Julius Shulman's images. Also this fall, Taschen is publishing Modernism Rediscovered, a book of Julius Shulman's photographs of the work of lesser-known but important modernist architects. 

Concurrent with this exhibition of Julius Shulman's Neutra photographs, Donzella, a gallery of 20th century design, features an exhibition of Julius Shulman's photographs of the interiors of Paul Laszlo, a recently rediscoverd mid-century California designer. Donzella is located at 17 White Street in New York City.

YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY
535 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
www.yanceyrichardson.com

Spencer Tunick, I-20 Gallery, New York - Reaction Zone

Spencer Tunick: Reaction Zone

I-20 Gallery, New York

November 9 – December 16, 2000

Spencer Tunick's exhibition Reaction Zone is the artist first show at I-20 since 1998. This show  comprises an installation of recent images taken in New York, Los Angeles, and the cities of Basel and Vienna.

Spencer Tunick's performances encompass dozens, hundreds or thousands of volunteers; and his photographs are records of these events. Without their clothing the individuals are like vessels. Most often grouped together and lying prone, the bodies are organisms that extend into and upon the landscape like a new substance. These grouped masses – which do not underscore sexuality – become abstract narratives that challenge or reconfigure one's views of nudity and privacy. The work also refers to the complex issue of presenting art in permanent or temporary public spaces.

Spencer Tunick's body of work may come to help define or at least clarify the social, political and legal issues surrounding art in the public sphere. Since 1994 Tunick has tried to work in New York without interference or imprisonment. After his fifth arrest in April 1999, the artist filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against New York City. In May 2000 Tunick won this First Amendment case in the Second U.S. District Court. On June 3, in response to the city's appeal made to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the court at large, the United States Supreme Court refused to rule in favor of the city, allowing the artist to organize his work on New York City streets.

Social Static, a black and white video made in collaboration with New York-based artist Chris Habib and with an original score composed and performed by Sonic Youth, will be shown in the East Room during the exhibition.

An exhibition catalogue (No.14), with an essay by Lisa Liebmann, was published for the exhibition.

In 2001 Spencer Tunick will organize an indoor performance for Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico. He will also participate in the first Valencia Biennial in Spain; and will organize a large performance in St. Petersburg, Russia, during the White Nights in June. His performances include the Vienna Kunsthalle 1999, and Statements at Art 30 Basel 1999. Tunick has had exhibitions at Art and Public, Geneva; the Magazine 4, Bregenz, Austria; and Perspectives at FIAC 2000, Paris. He will have fall shows at the Joao Graca Gallery, Lisbon, and the Hales Gallery, London. His works were recently acquired by the Dakis Joannou Foundation Collection in Athens, Greece.

Spencer Tunick has been documenting the live figure in public since 1992. Since 1994 he has made 45 group performances in the United States and Europe. Spencer Tunick was born in Middletown, New York, in 1967. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

I-20 GALLERY

529 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011

www.i-20.com

Peter Saul: Heads 1986 - 2000, Nolan Eckman Gallery, NYC

Peter Saul: Heads 1986 - 2000
Nolan/Eckman Gallery, New York
November 3 – December 9, 2000

Peter Saul’s ruthlessly comic and politically incorrect drawings and paintings begin at the neck and continue maniacally upward, closely documenting quite alarming distortions. As the artist Carroll Dunham notes in his introduction to the show’s accompanying catalogue, “Saul’s visual thermostat is set high—the threshold of his pictorial circuits must blow the fuses of many contemporary eyeballs.”

Peter Saul’s lovingly constructed fantasies slalom through a course of Zap Comix, Pop art, Cubism, and Surrealism. After all, this is an artist whose stated aim is to reconcile de Kooning with Mad magazine. 

Peter Saul was born in 1934. He has recently returned to the New York area after nearly twenty years of living in Austin, Texas. This is his second show at Nolan/Eckman Gallery. 

Peter Saul, Heads 1986 - 2000

Edited by David Nolan

Interview with Peter Saul by Carroll Dunham

68 pages, softcover, 20 color ill., 8.25 x 9 inches

Published by Nolan/Eckman Gallery, 2000.

NOLAN/ECKMAN GALLERY
560 Broadway, New York, NY 10012
www.nolaneckman.com

Updated: 15.07.2019

Robert Arneson, Nelson Gallery, UC Davis - Alice Street Revisited

Robert Arneson: Alice Street Revisited
Nelson Gallery, University of California, Davis
November 12 – December 15, 2000

Robert Arneson’s body of "Alice Street" works on view at The Richard L. Nelson Gallery, UC Davis, includes the monumental sculpture The Palace at 9 a.m., two large paintings Alice Blue and Alice House Billboard: Corner of L Street and Alice, as well as numerous drawings, studies and sketches. Each work uses as its point of departure the image of the artist’s former track house, located at the corner of Alice and L streets in Davis, California where Robert Arneson resided in the years between 1962 – 1976. Ranging in tone from reverent to ironic, the "Alice Street" works are as art-historically and socially probing, as they are engaged with the particulars of place and time from which they emerge. They challenge art-historical conventions and presciently foreshadow later art movements, in which the house as a symbol of the "American Dream" is thoroughly deconstructed as an American icon.

Robert Arneson’s interest in playing with perspective and the house icon achieves perhaps its most complex exploration in the monumental sculpture, The Palace at 9 a.m., which he made in 1974 as a remake of his original "Alice House" sculpture Big Alice, 1967. However, The Palace at 9 a.m, became a much more elaborated version of its original, and its title is thought to be a play on Giacometti’s surrealist dreamscape The Palace at 4 a.m.

The intentionally child-like, direct, and vernacular handling of the clay in The Palace at 9 a.m., with its scatological and primal allusions, heightens both the playful and serious impact of the piece. Exaggeration of perspective, both through Robert Arneson’s placement of the piece at a calculated height, and also more noticeably through the angles of the roof-line and street sign, achieve a cartoon-like presence for the work that Robert Arneson poignantly pits against its primal references to mark-making and shelter. Shrubs, bushes, trees, dog tracks, dog excrement, wood chips, piles of garbage, the family van, a basketball hoop, and other evidence of habitation, are all sculpted expressively as part of the great model. The house and its surroundings are marked with drippy, washy vivid pinks, greens, blues, and yellows, achieving both a true sense of likeness to the house, and a cartoon-like aura. The artist’s actual handprint appears across a front window as a "mark of the self", a haptic signature, not unlike the prehistoric hand prints found in caves as evidence of those who once inhabited a particular site. With this handprint, and other marks ranging from footprints to patterned imprints, Robert Arneson reconnects the enterprise of sculpture with the ritual of the quotidian, replacing the sculpted bust on the pedestal with an archeological investigation of domestic space and time.

Robert Arneson’s polemic humor continues in works such as Fort Alice, which go even further in their mockery of the enterprise of homeownership and domestic life. But Robert Arneson’s irony and humor is tempered with equal doses of self-investigation, and even with an overt display of affection for his own house, its life, and certainly the enterprise of art-making to which he turned over both his house and his life energy. Alice Blue, plays with associations of the color blue with royalty and divinity, linking them to ideas of the track home, the American dream, the nuclear family, and the content and meaning of art and art history while Alice House Billboard: Corner of Alice and L, created between 1967-68, carries forward Robert Arneson’s challenge to the painted canvas and its conventions, through its play with perspective and its unraveling of the idea of the house and the framed painting as icons of civility. Trapezoidal in shape, the billboard-like painting presents a view of 1303 Alice complete with a sunny blue sky, family van parked in the driveway, and a rainbow which traces the entire eave of the roof. The rainbow, with its references to both the 1960’s counterculture and to the myth of the "American Dream" as a "Somewhere over the Rainbow," functions as a comic double-entendre, rooting the painting in the culture of its time.

Richard L. Nelson Gallery & The Fine Arts Collection
1 Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616
Room 124, Art Building, University of California, Davis
www.nelsongallery.ucdavis.edu

Tony Tuckson, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra - Painting Forever

Painting Forever: Tony Tuckson

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

4 November 2000 — 4 February 2001

Painting Forever: Tony Tuckson displays in depth the most beautiful and representative paintings and drawings by Australia’s greatest abstract expressionist artist TONY TUCKSON. This is the first major survey exhibition of Tony Tuckson’s work since 1976 and offers a unique opportunity to both discover and reassess one of Australia’s most important twentieth century artists.

The exhibition charts the progression of Tony Tuckson as an artist, from prominent student of naturalist watercolours and post war murals to pre-eminent abstract expressionist. The exhibition explores one of the defining features of 20th century art-the journey towards abstraction. His life’s work is a journey of emotional, intellectual and aesthetic discovery. Painting Forever seeks to balance Tony Tuckson’s most radical, extreme and beautiful late paintings and drawings with early paintings and contextual material to reveal how he became and remained an abstract expressionist artist.

Tony Tuckson’s paintings were usually produced alongside numerous drawings and painted works on paper (including sketchbooks). The exhibition uses this pattern of production as the formal structure of the display. The earliest oil paintings, drawings and watercolours are selectively displayed in a dense ‘domestic’ hang – including art school studies, unframed serial drawings, unstretched experimental oil paintings, family studies, nudes and early nightclub scenes. This domestic hang reiterates both the subject matter of family, service comrades and friends, and the situation in which the works were made.

From this point forward the exhibition alternates groups of ever more abstracted paintings with the best works from Tony Tuckson’s drawn oeuvre. Early 1950s tentative abstraction – led by the radical gouache drawings on newspaper are interspersed with the last of the formal oil paintings. Expressive ‘divisionist’ paintings on composition board open up into a powerful group of the scratchy, delicate masterpieces of the early 1960s. These in turn lead to a great group of red, black and white paintings, including some of his most extreme and compelling gouache-collage drawings.

The exhibition concludes with a whole gallery space devoted to the 1970s ‘veil’ paintings and attenuated charcoal drawings. This display contains some of Tony Tuckson’s greatest and most expressive works of art, including the late diptych’s and previously un-exhibited drawings. The exhibition closes with the great autobiographical masterpieces Grey 1973 and White sketch 1973. It is hoped that the artists many self-portraits (both drawn and painted) provide the binding motif for visitors to the exhibition.

Painting Forever: Tony Tuckson seeks to establish a new audience for this wonderful artist as well as nurturing existing fans. It appeals to younger viewers, through making a virtue of Tony Tuckson’s most radical and expressive works, and by providing a very clear and straightforward contextual insight into the artist and his work.

The national tour of Painting Forever:Tony Tuckson exhibition will commence in late February 2001 following the display in Canberra.

Curator: Tim Fisher

NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA - NGA

Parkes Place, Parkes, Canberra ACT 2600

nga.gov.au

James Herbert, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center - Paintings, Films, Videos and Stills

James Herbert

Paintings, Films, Videos and Stills

Atlanta Contemporary Art Center

November 4 - December 30, 2000

Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (The Contemporary) presents a comprehensive, retrospective exhibition of James Herbert’s paintings, films, videos and stills. This exhibition, organized by Teresa Bramlette, marks the first occasion upon which the entire oeuvre of James Herbert’s work has been presented in one space at one time.

James Herbert has worked in Athens, GA since the 1960s. An accomplished painter and filmmaker, he has been awarded numerous grants in both mediums. He has been honored with film screenings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, where this fall he will premiere his new film Jumbo Aqua. His paintings are large in scale and reflect both his abstract expressionistic roots and his interest in the outsider art prominent in the southeast. Herbert’s films are sensual and poetic depicting dream-like sequences by using various illusory effects--shooting, rephotographing footage, slowing projection speeds, and reversing motion.

James Herbert has been an influential teacher for several generations of young painters. He has not shown a group of his paintings in this area since a solo exhibition at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, in the late 1970s. His films, shown primarily within the context of independent film festivals, are also rarely screened for southern audiences.

Although this exhibition should in no way be considered a retrospective, it is important to recognize James Herbert’s contributions and his accomplishments at this point in his career. It is also interesting to examine the dual nature of his practice—the painting and the filmmaking.

For many years, James Herbert utilized the process of re-photography in his films. He studied each frame of his original footage, editing and then refilming the selected frames to make the final presentation. This deconstruction of the initial film works provocatively, suggesting in its barely perceptible disjunctiveness, a dream-like state. Centered on a concept of beauty as personified by the human body, the work is unquestionably voyeuristic. In contrast to his more distanced stance as a filmmaker, James Herbert’s paintings are direct, with the paint sometimes applied by his hands and other less traditional tools. Where the films are quiet, the paintings are loud. Where the films are fragile and romantic, the paintings are aggressive. To be able to compare and contrast the two will be an exciting and perhaps once-in-lifetime opportunity.

A catalogue accompanies the show with texts by Donald Kuspit, Felicia Feaster, Teresa Bramlette, Genevieve McGillicuddy and Donald Keyes (who also selected the film stills on view).

ATLANTA CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER

535 Means Street NW, Atlanta, Georgia, 30318

thecontemporary.org

Pierre Faure, Büro für Fotos, Cologne

Pierre Faure

Büro für Fotos, Cologne

28 October - 16 December 2000

The large color photographs of PIERRE FAURE are images of urban civilisation in the metropolis of the present. They show people and situations in a city space that has long ago lost, or perhaps never owned, a human measure: industrial zones at urban peripheries and in city centres, traffic junctions, urban no man's lands.

The films and photographic work of Pierre Faure are based "as he himself says in an interview" on constant observation. As an observer, he becomes attentive to situations in which individuals maintain their presence in relation to lifeless surroundings. A group of taxi drivers sits between two rows of cabs, under one of the countless pillars at a Parisian airport. Waiting for hours in this space, they play chess. A man and a woman meet on the Plateau of La Defense before the stereotypical cold facades of a wall of office buildings. A traveller reads, quiet and alone, in the waiting room of a train station, oblivious to the garbage around her. The urban situations that Pierre Faure describes show how parallel worlds with invisible boundaries evolve out of "non-lieux"(non-space) realms and point the way to the choreography of the everyday.

Through this rich and complex net of relationships we find ourselves in unknown spheres where nothing belongs to anyone, but also where signs of the human condition blink off and on. In this respect, Pierre Faure seeks to frame the way our hidden compasses guide us across the public stage. Pierre Faure prevents the viewer from penetrating his work by keeping him at a certain remove from the space represented. He reveals no recognisable social classifications of his subjects; his interest lies in the diversity of appearance and sense of reality each person projects alone or in relationship to others.

Pierre Faure was born in 1965, studied photography in Arles at the Ecole Nationale de la Photographie. He lives in Montreuil near Paris.

BURO FUR FOTOS

Ewaldistraße 5, 50670 Köln

www.burofurfotos.de

Cutting Edge Israeli Art at Israel Museum, Jerusalem - Artists: Irina Birger, Karen Russo, Ruti Nemet, Zoya Cherkassky

 

A DOLL’S HOUSE

IRINA BIRGER - KAREN RUSSO – RUTI NEMET – ZOYA CHERKASSKY

 

A Doll's House is the fourth exhibition in the framework of the Joint project for young art at the Israel Museum. The four women artists taking part in this exhibition: Irina Birger, Karen Russo, Ruti Nemet and Zoya Cherkassky, are showing three installations in the exhibition. On the surface, their installation works differ one from the other both in character and in creative process, yet the common element is almost immediately apparent. Each work is made up of images taken from different 'artistic' fields: painting, sculpture or photography as well as images drawn from media sources such as voices taped from the television and internet, animation and especially cinematic images.

These many sources do not only serve to concretize the interdisciplinary characteristic of contemporary culture, each one in its own way also raises and interprets images connected to the more hidden worlds of mythology, folktales, fairy stories and the research of the sub-conscience. In Karen Russo's installation, The Mute, for example, the descent into a complex, hidden world is immediate and concrete. The work opens with a staircase leading down into a mine, a dark passage that receives the viewer in a physical manner and 'initiates' him into the other aspects of the installation. Russo sees her installation space as a cave in the depths of the earth, representing hell, madness, the kingdom of darkness and irrationality. The space contains scientific data, archaeological finds and figures and objects from folktales, horror stories and movies.

Part of a Russian animated film, The Snow Queen, is at the center of Irina Birger's installation, also entitled The Snow Queen, - a nostalgic passage into the world of folk tales as seen through the cinematic experience of childhood. The scene shown here can be read as an index to the entire story, which depicts the boy Kay's exit from the world into the Ice Kingdom and the palace of the Snow Queen, who represents all that is irrational and lacking in emotion. Kay is eventually redeemed from his imprisonment and returned to the world and the realm of reality with the help of his love, Gerda. Birgir brings this tale of dark magic to life by screening her images on, and through, a screen of glass stalactites.

Through doll-like figures of themselves and their friends, Ruti Nemet and Zoya Cherkassky replicate the intimate world of their circle. In their installation entitled Study-cases, they are recreated as frozen bodies, dense and tactile, healthily "dead", without having died or been killed. Ruti and Zoya use the dolls as a game that becomes an alternative world, created by the precise copying of their existing one. The extended time taken to create the dolls and their environments sharpens their reality and dialectic existence, until there is no contradiction between the "real" and the alternative, illusory time and place. Dream markers and realms of the imagination are only hinted at within the doll's bodies. The figures' faces are slightly contorted, bordering on the edge of a grotesque countenance, which hints at the possibilities of their belonging to a species of harmful figures.

The immediacy and concreteness of these installations, on the one hand, and their complexity as stories which also hint at a secret world, on the other, gives these works by Ruti Nemet and Zoya Cherkassky, Karen Russo, and Irina Birger an allegorical touch, a dimension of a fable whose meaning has vanished.

The exhibition was curated by Sarit Shapira.

Closing: January 2001

Mario Reis, Fassbender Gallery, Chicago - From Nature to Abstraction

Mario Reis: From Nature to Abstraction

Fassbender Gallery, Chicago

October 20 - November 25, 2000

Fassbender Gallery's Project Room presents From Nature to Abstraction by German conceptual artist Mario Reis. Calling the final product of his artistic output 'Nature Watercolors', this artist has travelled for many years throughout the world, seeking out rivers in which to complete his ongoing artistic project. The artist floats stretched two-foot square canvases in various natural bodies of water for up to three weeks. Slowly, sediment is deposited, minerals are soaked up and pollutants settle out of the surrounding water. After collecting these canvas 'traps', the artist unstretches the works and freezes interesting results with spray adhesive.

The end results of all this process are ghostly, ethereal and often beautiful. The panels are displayed in grids to heighten their minimal qualities and draw attention to their relative color saturations. While listing the origin-river on each panel, the artist downplays any environmentalist connotations, choosing instead to highlight purely visual and sensual aspects of these artworks.

Nonetheless, by drawing attention to these quiet, earthy and restful palettes, Mario Reis has no choice but to draw attention to notions of the natural world and Arcadian splendor. Especially when viewed in an urban gallery environment, these works serve to remind the viewer of all that he or she is missing. Besides the generic 'natural' surroundings they conjure up, they additionally hint at all the exotic places their author has been. Much like the always popular travelogue, they allow us to vicariously share in Mario Reis's extensive journeys. These monochromatic and naturally pigmented artworks give concrete evidence of the endless ebb and flow of life that surrounds us all.

FASSBENDER GALLERY

835 W. Washington, Chicago, IL 60607

www.fassbendergallery.com

Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000, LACMA, Los Angeles

Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000

LACMA, Los Angeles

October 22, 2000 – February 25, 2001

Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000, is a landmark exhibition that addresses the relationship between the arts in California and the state’s evolving image over the past century. Organized by LACMA – The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the exhibition goes beyond a standard presentation of California art to offer a revisionist view of the state and its cultural legacy. It considers both "booster" images of California and other coexisting and at times competing images, reflecting the wide range of interests and experiences of the state’s diverse constituencies. The core organizers of the exhibition are Stephanie Barron, vice president of education and public programs and senior curator of Modern and Contemporary Art; Sheri Bernstein, exhibition associate; and Ilene Susan Fort, curator of American Art. Made in California is the largest exhibition LACMA has ever organized or hosted, representing an unprecedented collaboration among nine curatorial and programmatic departments.

Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000 features more than 800 works of art in a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, graphic art, decorative art, costume, and video, as well as several period rooms. About 20 percent of the art in the exhibition is drawn from LACMA’s permanent collection. Also included are more than 400 cultural documents such as tourist brochures, rock posters, labor pamphlets, and documentary photographs from important public and private collections from across the nation, that convey California’s fascinating history and changing popular image. Installed throughout the exhibition are sixteen specially commissioned film and multimedia stations, two music stations, and three mural reconstructions to further enrich this examination of the fine arts and popular conceptions of the state.

"Because the year 2000 marks the 150th anniversary of California’s statehood as well as the end of the twentieth century, this is the perfect time for LACMA to undertake this expansive and innovative examination of the culture of our state," said Dr. Andrea Rich, president and director of LACMA. "This stimulating and in-depth presentation of California imagery, through both popular and fine art, will appeal to a wide ranging audience and will offer our members and visitors an opportunity to consider California from new perspectives."

"With Made in California, LACMA has pushed the envelope with an exhibition that is unlike anything we have ever done before," said Stephanie Barron, LACMA vice president of education and public programs and senior curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. "What makes the show so important is not its massive size and scope. This exhibition has a methodology – the finished product is a direct result of the cross-fertilization that has occurred among various different departments at the museum during the last five years. It has been exciting to work with the multi-disciplinary team to create something truly wonderful."

"Made in California approaches the past 100 years thematically, presenting works that engage in a meaningful way with the California image. As opposed to a survey exhibition, Made in California moves beyond the established canon of artists and art works to include lesser-known works by celebrated figures as well as a wider range of artists, more in keeping with the diversity of California’s population," said Ilene Susan Fort, curator of American Art and one of the core organizers of the exhibition. "It is the shared conviction of the exhibition organizers that this approach, intended to initiate a broader dialogue on California art rather than establish a new canon, befits this period of transition to the next century."

"The design of the exhibition functions as a whole to facilitate an intelligent and seductive museum experience," said Sheri Bernstein, exhibition associate and one of the core organizers of the exhibition. "The members of the exhibition design team participated in meetings for more than a year at which the exhibition concept was developed and refined. They then devised solutions for communicating the ideas of the exhibition through materials, arrangement, space, and various forms of didactic and visual communications working together."

Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900–2000 is presented thematically in five chronological sections spanning approximately twenty years each, plus a coda to the exhibition that focuses on the current moment, and occupies more than 45,000 square feet of gallery space within the Hammer and Anderson Buildings and LACMA West. While the sections are most powerful when viewed together, each section is designed to stand alone as a single exhibition. In conjunction with Made in California, LACMA is mounting a kaleidoscope of related activities and events including ongoing film and music programs, live performances, readings, family days, and lecture series.

In each section of the exhibition, diverse examples of art in a variety of media and styles are presented thematically, in tandem with relevant examples of ephemera and multimedia stations featuring film footage, music selections, and California murals.

Section One, located on the plaza level of the Hammer Building and covering the 1900s and 1910s, lays the conceptual groundwork for the exhibition. In this section visitors consider the various facets of the mythologizing of California as a pre-modern paradise, primarily by the state’s boosters, to a largely middle-class, Midwestern constituency escaping the influx of European immigrants. In addition to presenting the land itself as bountiful and unpopulated, boosters romanticized California’s cultural heritage by means of the Mission myth, and exoticized its contemporary Asian population.

Visitors then move to the second floor of the Hammer building for Section Two, which addresses the proliferation of a wider range of conceptions of California in the 1920s and 1930s. This section explores the impact of urbanization, new industries such as the Hollywood movie sector, and changing demographics – the influx of Mexicans in the 20s and the westward migration of North Americans during the Depression – on the image of California. For the first time, critical images of California began to proliferate, many of which were sympathetic to working class labor.

Section Three brings visitors to the third floor of the Anderson Building for California in the 1940s and 1950s. This section considers California’s image during and immediately following World War II, when the state emerged first as a center for war production, and then as a trend setter for the postwar suburban lifestyle. The prevalence of racist and xenophobic attitudes toward ethnic minorities during and after the War will be explored. Also considered will be other, coexisting images of California promoted by its urban subcultures, as well as dystopic views of mainstream culture promulgated by the Beats in San Francisco and the Los Angeles area.

Section Four, covering the 1960s and 1970s, examines how California and particularly the Bay Area became widely associated with non-conformity and anti-authoritarianism. During this period of pervasive protest and struggles for equality along ethnic, class, and gender lines, definitions of California and its populace came to be defined by a more diverse range of figures, who challenged homogeneous, Edenic images of the state. The exhibition will explore the participation of artists in this process of redefinition, as well as their immersion in aspects of popular culture such as beach and car culture.

Section Five of Made in California brings visitors to the plaza level of the Anderson Building to consider the 1980s and 1990s. This section addresses a multiplicity of California images that have existed over the past twenty years, fostered by the increasing diversity of the state’s constituency. Also considered is the impact of globalization, which in some respects has blurred boundaries between California and elsewhere. As visitors leave Section Five, they will enter a transition space that is free of visual images, filled with audio recordings that reflect the wide variety of cultures and languages coexisting in contemporary California. This profusion of the many competing/coexisting voices that define California today sets the stage for Made in California: Now, presented by LACMALab in the Boone Children’s Gallery in LACMA West.

This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Exhibition Team: Organized by Stephanie Barron, vice president of education and public programs and senior curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, with Sheri Bernstein, exhibition associate, and Ilene Susan Fort, curator of American Art.

With Ian Birnie, head of Film Programs, Bridget Cooks, assistant museum educator, Carol S. Eliel, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Howard Fox, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Dale Gluckman, curator of Costumes and Textiles, Sharon Goodman, associate curator of Prints and Drawings, Peter Kirby, adjunct curator, new media (Made in California only), Jo Lauria, assistant curator of Decorative Arts, Kaye Spilker, assistant curator of Costumes and Textiles, Dorrance Stalvey, head of Music Programs, Sharon Takeda, curator of Costumes and Textiles, Tim Wride, associate curator of Photography, and Lynn Zelevansky, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036

www.lacma.org

T.L. Solien, Fassbender Gallery, Chicago - Innocence Transfigured

T.L. Solien: Innocence Transfigured

Fassbender Gallery, Chicago

October 20 - November 25, 2000

Fassbender Gallery presents Innocence Transfigured, a new body of work by Midwestern painter T.L. Solien. Here, the artist continues his investigation of the inner life of self-portraiture. While employing Pop imagery as a starting point, Solien as an artist is almost impossible to pin down. He borrows and incorporates influences from all spheres of his life experience and knowledge. Utilizing compositional techniques from classic portraiture, Solien's 'sitters' nonetheless transgress all rules of decorum. Starting off as light-hearted, almost vacuous Pop characters from advertising and cartoons, they quickly veer off into the realm of the macabre. They transmogrify before our very eyes from cute and cuddly girls and puppies into horned goats and cursed wraiths. More than this, the flesh and substance of these characters has a tendency to melt and vaporize into pure brushwork and painted surface. Solien obliterates and overpaints until the space of his picture planes becomes claustrophobic and unhealthy.

Throughout all this, however, T.L. Solien retains his sense of humor and wonder at all that life brings his way. Admittedly autobiographical in his output, the artist presents grave situations, but in ambiguous and universal fashion. Despite mystical and paganistic titles and vertiginous, kaleidoscopic settings, these paintings address normal middle class life in Middle America in the present day. They hold up the artist's life as an example of the soap opera we are all living. With a cast of characters that frequently resurface and, no doubt, represent specific people in the life of the artist, these artworks are strangely familiar. They are classic examples of the power of satire to instruct and draw us all together.

FASSBENDER GALLERY

835 W. Washington, Chicago, IL 60607

www.fassbendergallery.com

Vous avez dit photographie ? Guide Pratique

Rubrique Livres > Photographie - Guide professionnel

La Documentation française publie dans sa collection « Photodoc » un ouvrage intitulé « Vous avez dit photographie? Les adresses utiles de la photographie en France ». Pour sa troisième édition entièrement réactualisée qui comprend 100 nouvelles adresses, "Vous avez dit photographie ?" confirme sa place de répertoire de référence pour les professionnels de la photographie et pour ceux qui en sont passionnés. Guide pratique, l'ouvrage fournit une présentation claire et détaillée de 700 organismes jouant un rôle dans le domaine de la photographie en France. Organisé en sept chapitres, il répond aux différentes demandes d'information pour promouvoir la photographie, s'organiser, se financer, exposer-vendre, s'informer, se former, restaurer. Une liste des organismes classés par département permet de repérer d'un coup d'œil les lieux de la photographie dans sa région. Un index de 2000 termes facilite la recherche d'un organisme, d'un journaliste spécialisé, d'un photographe diffusé en galerie. Vous avez dit photographie ? La Documentation française Collection Photodoc 258 pages, 18 €

Bernard Meninsky at University of Liverpool Art Gallery - A singular vision

Bernard Meninsky: A singular vision

University of Liverpool Art Gallery

19 October - 21 December 2000

Brilliant draughtsmanship and an exquisite sense of colour combine to create the 'singular vision' of BERNARD MENINSKY (1891 - 1950). Widely considered one of Britain's finest young artists in the 1920s, Meninsky's work has been gradually eclipsed since his untimely death in 1950. This exhibition is the first held in a public gallery for twenty years. The show brings together forty-five drawings, watercolours and oil paintings from his early family studies through to the late pastoral landscape and figure scenes of the 1940s.

'Minky', as he was known to friends, was a Jewish emigré brought to Liverpool as a baby from the Ukraine. He studied at Liverpool School of Art, in Paris, and at the Slade. After a brief but successful period as a war artist Bernard Meninsky achieved critical success in 1919-20 for an exhibition and book of mother and child studies. Over the next three decades he exhibited regularly, and was an elected member of the London Group and New English Art Club. Bernard Meninsky was a gifted teacher of drawing attracting students from London and abroad. In 1935 he designed the sets and costumes for the ballet 'David' produced by the Markova-Dolin company and in 1946 published an illustrated limited edition of Milton's 'Il Penseroso and L'Allegro'.

Tragically, Bernard Meninsky was afflicted by a highly self-critical and sensitive nature, resulting in periods of breakdown and ultimately his suicide in 1950. Driven by "uncertainties, mysteries and doubts" Meninsky was "indefatigable in extending the boundaries of his art". This exhibition, traces his development from the early, tender studies of friends and family, through sensitive and poetic landscapes of the twenties to the monumental and elegaic figure paintings of the 1930s and 40s.

The exhibition has been organised by the University of Liverpool in conjunction with the Contemporary Art Society. The show marks the generous bequest of the artist's estate by his widow, Nora Meninsky, to the CAS. The exhibition tours during 2001 to Leeds, Sheffield, London and Kingston-Upon-Thames. 

UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL ART GALLERY

3 Abercromby Square, Liverpool L69 7WY

www.liv.ac.uk

Kathryn Spence, Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco - New Works

Kathryn Spence: New Works

Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco

October 5 - November 11, 2000

The STEPHEN WIRTZ GALLERY presents an exhibition of new works by KATHRYN SPENCE.

Kathryn Spence's work explores the relationship between our emotional and physical comfort and the way it relates to our surroundings. Spence's pieces and installations involve the piling, layering, and thus transformation of previously used and cast off materials and encourages us to look at these pieces made from trash, mud, string etc. in a new context.

For this exhibition, Kathryn Spence has created installations that suggest the transformative aspects of sorting, organizing and cleaning. The new installation plays with aspects of scale and the relationship between the real and the made, the specific and the arbitrary, the concrete and the abstract. Amongst the exhibited works will be small squirrels and piles made from various cloths and materials, as well as birds, sparrows and robins made out of street trash, wire and string. In recent past exhibitions, Spence made Mud Animals that were literally coated with layers of dirt from her garden and appeared to be dejected and leaden. The effect is one that elicits both pathos and a sense of humanity. Her created objects are made to look both vulnerable and fragile by her use of ephemeral materials.

KATHRYN SPENCE (b.1963, Stuttgart, Germany) received her M.F.A. from Mills College in 1993. She has participated in such recent exhibitions as "Of the Moment: Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection", at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, "Skin-Deep: Surface and Appearance in Contemporary Art", at The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, The 1999 Biennial Exhibition at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach and "Present Tense: Nine Artists in the Nineties" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Kathryn Spence had her first solo museum exhibition at The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in 1999, and will have a solo show at The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in Spring 2001.

STEPHEN WIRTZ GALLERY

49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

www.wirtzgallery.com

Heribert C. Ottersbach, University of Liverpool, Senate House Exhibition Hall - Between Strategy and Attitude

Heribert C. Ottersbach: 

Between Strategy and Attitude

Senate House Exhibition Hall, 

University of Liverpool

6 October - 10 November 2000

Heribert Ottersbach has achieved success internationally but his paintings are little known in the UK. In the second showing of his work in this country ten recent paintings are brought together at the University of Liverpool's Senate House from 6 October to 10 November.

The demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of Iron Curtain politics have had a strong impact on the work of Heribert C. Ottersbach. His interest in the fall of the Berlin Wall is part of a broader interest in the cultural traditions of the twentieth century.

Ottersbach often works with 'found images' in his painting. He works freely often adding invented 'archival pictures' to the images he has discovered from existing sources. The images are manipulated using computer software to create a "digital sketchbook or imagepool".

There is nothing mechanical about the creation of Ottersbach's finished paintings. The creative process remains vital: "The moment at which the images generated digitally are transferred to the canvas something different is created: Painting. Painting includes a physical impact, it is 'body-work' far away from written language or computer generated images." This intimate relation between artist and canvas is conveyed to the viewer in the subtlety and delicacy of the paintings themselves. Although primarily an artist of ideas Ottersbach's skill as a painter draws us into a deeper sensory engagement with his art.

'Between Strategy and Attitude' is part of 'Eight Days a Week', an exchange of art exhibitions bringing the work of Cologne artists to Liverpool. 'Eight Days a Week' is being showcased at many Liverpool galleries between 6 October and 10 November 2000.

Senate House Exhibition Hall 

University of Liverpool

Oxford Street, Liverpool L69 7WY

www.liv.ac.uk

Teresita Fernandez at SITE Santa Fe

Teresita Fernández

SITE Santa Fe

October 7, 2000 - January 14, 2001

SITE Santa Fe presents New York-based artist TERESITA FERNÁNDEZ in an exhibition of new works. The exhibition is organized by SITE Santa Fe and curated by Louis Grachos, the Director & Curator of SITE Santa Fe. An exhibition catalogue specific to her SITE Santa Fe exhibition and published by SITE Santa Fe is available.

For SITE Santa Fe, Teresita Fernández has chosen a 5000 square foot space that she will alter and modify for her new works. Teresita Fernández writes, "I am currently developing a body of work which deals with the impossibility of wilderness. I am interested in landscape in terms of exotic place, extreme place and objectified space. The concept of wilderness in particular is at the core of these new works‹thought as a kind of place where one loses one's way, goes astray and becomes literally bewildered. But this very notion of wilderness already implies human presence because in fact, this wandering remains an act of human presence, and the wandering becomes about finding, choosing, marking sites that are most grand, most extreme, most exotic."

The SITE Santa Fe exhibition consists of an entirely new body of work. It will focus on large-scale sculptural works and wall pieces where, unlike the installations, it is the viewer who surrounds the individual works. Teresita Fernández elaborates, "These works will incorporate abstracted references to natural phenomena, sites in the landscape and states of arrest and movement. For example; references to frozen waterfalls, land formations, and foliage will be used as vehicles for situations that place the viewer as witness to the objectified "site" in nature.

Teresita Fernández was born in Miami in 1968 and holds a M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in New York, Miami, Washington, Chicago, Toronto, Tokyo, and Amsterdam, among others. Teresita Fernández has received fellowships from the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and a Cintas Fellowship. She had a residency in 1998 with the American Academy in Rome, Italy. This year, she received a Tiffany Foundation artist grant.

SITE Santa Fe

1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, New Mexico

www.sitesantafe.org