Au temps de Marcel Proust, la collection F.-G. Seligmann au musée Carnavalet, Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Au temps de Marcel Proust, la collection F.-G. Seligmann au musée Carnavalet

Musée Carnavalet, Paris

31 octobre 2001 - 20 janvier 2002

Eminent marchand d'art, François-Gérard Seligmann (1912-1999) avait placé sa collection, consacrée à la Belle Époque, sous le vocable de Marcel Proust, son auteur de prédilection. Soucieuse de préserver l'esprit de cet ensemble remarquable et la mémoire de son époux, Madame Françoise Seligmann a offert 160 oeuvres au musée Carnavalet qui bénéficie là d’un des gestes les plus généreux de son histoire. [voir sur Wanafoto le post Legs de la collection de Madame Seligmann à la Ville de Paris].

Infatigable découvreur de chefs d'œuvre pour les grands musées et les collectionneurs européens et américains, F.-G. Seligmann sut s'affranchir des modes du moment, n'hésitant pas à acquérir pour lui-même les créations d'artistes académiques à la réputation déclinante, convaincu que le talent d'un Luc-Olivier Merson ou d'un Léon Bonnat, serait un jour de nouveau reconnu. Au premier rang des peintres qu'il souhaitait remettre à l'honneur, figuraient Henri Gervex et Carolus-Duran. Lorsqu'une rétrospective consacrée à Gervex (1852-1929) fut montée au musée Carnavalet en 1992-1993, avec les musées des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux et de Nice, F.-G. Seligmann fut le plus enthousiaste des prêteurs. Les visiteurs du musée retrouveront définitivement sur les cimaises de Carnavalet une douzaine de toiles parmi les plus séduisantes de l'exposition, dont l'immense et lumineuse Soirée au Pré-Catelan.

L'autre artiste qu'estimait particulièrement F.-G. Seligmann était le portraitiste Carolus-Duran (1837-1917). Comme Albert Besnard qui figure également dans la donation, Carolus-Duran fut dans ses dernières années directeur de la Villa Médicis et, comme lui, injustement décrié en raison du décalage entre son réel talent et les bouleversements rapides de l'art au début du XXe siècle. L'éblouissant Portrait de la marquise de Vaucouleurs ou celui de Marguerite et Robert de Broglie enfants s'imposent pourtant par leur acuité psychologique comme par le brillant de leur exécution. Ainsi, grâce aux pinceaux de Théobald Chartran, de Charles Chaplin, ou encore d'Ernest Duez renaît toute une série de figures mondaines, sans oublier des personnalités artistiques comme Sarah Bernhardt, par Louise Abbéma, ou Mary Cassatt, par le jeune Jacques-Émile Blanche.

Loin de se limiter aux gloires passées du portrait, F.-G. Seligmann fut aussi très sensible aux petits tableaux de genre de la Belle Époque, si rares dans les musées français. Au nombre de ces artistes au style léché dont les carrières sont plus difficiles à retracer, Jean Béraud a retrouvé une célébrité certaine comme un des meilleurs chroniqueurs de son temps. Deux scènes de café de ce dernier - dont une Absinthe - viennent ainsi rejoindre le bel ensemble d'œuvres de Béraud déjà réuni à Carnavalet. Quelques toiles ou aquarelles, acquises pour leur sujet et leur charme certain, sont encore anonymes, mais deux artistes à redécouvrir seront désormais en valeur au musée : le dessinateur Henri Somm, avec dix-sept figures d'élégantes des années 1890-1900, et Abel Truchet avec sept tableaux. Ce séduisant artiste, compromis entre Béraud et Toulouse-Lautrec, se distingue incontestablement par l'habileté de ses cadrages presque japonisants et la sensibilité de son coloris.

L'ensemble de la donation F.-G. Seligmann, complétée par les quelques scènes de plage et natures mortes que le musée Carnavalet a préféré ne pas retenir en raison de leur caractère non parisien, fera l'objet d'une publication exhaustive. Elle sera exposée dans son intégralité avant que la plupart des peintures ne rejoignent les salles permanentes et que les dessins ne gagnent les réserves où ils seront conservés à l'abri de la lumière. Une salle du musée portera le nom de François-Gérard Seligmann, en reconnaissance de la générosité de son épouse et de la personnalité exceptionnelle du collectionneur dont le souvenir chaleureux reste encore très présent pour tous ceux qui ont eu la chance de l'approcher.

Commissaires de l'exposition :

Jean-Marie Bruson, conservateur en chef au musée Carnavalet

Christophe Leribault, conservateur au musée Carnavalet

Catalogue :

Au temps de Marcel Proust

La collection F.-G. Seligmann au musée Carnavalet

Préface par Edmonde Charles-Roux, de l’Académie Goncourt

Introduction par Henri Loyrette

Edition Paris-Musées, 256 pages, 22 x 27 cm relié, environ 200 illustrations en couleur

MUSÉE CARNAVALET - HISTOIRE DE PARIS

23, rue de Sévigné, 75003 Paris

www.paris-france.org/musees/musee_carnavalet

Petah Coyne, Julie Saul Gallery, NYC - Spring Snow Exhibition

Petah Coyne: Spring Snow 

Julie Saul Gallery, New York 

October 27 - December 8, 2001 

The Julie Saul Gallery presents its first solo exhibition of new photographic work and a sculptural installation by Petah Coyne, entitled Spring Snow. This is Coyne¹s second photographic exhibition in New York, the first was held in 1996. The installation includes fifteen prints and two hanging sculptures from 1996/97 in her characteristic medium of assembled bows, ribbons and birds melded with wax.

The photographs convey a sense of youth and energy. The swirling imagery of the black and white prints features tumbling children, gliding brides and debutantes dancing through dreamy space. The subjects relate to the female sculptural figures incorporated into Coyne¹s new sculptural work- Madonnas transformed into metaphoric nuns, birds and veiled sirens. This new sculpture is exhibited concurrently in an exhibition entitled White Rain at the new Galerie Lelong space at 528 West 26th St. from November 3 through December 8.

The title Spring Snow was inspired and derived from the Japanese writer Mishima's final series of novels which were written at a time in his life and concern matters similar to those of Coyne. The artist sees new beginnings in this series- an attempt to capture the freshness and energy of youth- as something remembered in feeling rather than narrative. She also intends for the viewer to bring their own emotional and visual memories to create their own reality in relation to the images. The installation includes prints ranging from small to monumental, creating a sense of moving in and out in the same way that Petah Coyne herself moves around while making photographs. The sculptures, one black, the other white, evoke the duality of all Petah Coyne's work, a celebration of life joined with a recognition of death and mortality. Petah Coyne sees her photographic work as both independent and linked to her sculpture activity. She has noted that in some ways they function as the drawings relating to the sculpture- both studies and summations.

Petah Coyne's work has been shown extensively in the United States and abroad, including the 2000 Biennial of the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, the Aldrich Museum, Connecticut and a photographic survey appeared at the Weatherspoon Museum at the University of North Carolina in 1997.

JULIE SAUL GALLERY

535 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011

www.saulgallery.com

April Gornik at Danese Gallery, New York - New Work

April Gornik: New Work

Danese Gallery, New York

October 26 – December 1, 2001

Danese presents an exhibition of new work by April Gornik.

In her large, beautifully modulated charcoal drawings and her more intimately scaled paintings on canvas, April Gornik continues to offer a personal and poignant view of natural environments – fog-bound wetlands and marshes, rock strewn shorelines, broad blue bands of sea and sky, dramatic cloud formations – that celebrates the power of light to transform the human spirit and redefine the physical world.

There’s never a sign of human presence in her work because she wants the viewer to engage with her images in an absolutely private way. In eliminating the human element and heightening the drama of earth and sky, Gornik’s paintings take on a hallucinatory edge, and become more about the landscape of the imagination than anything one could locate in the real world.¹

April Gornik demonstrates light’s capacity to illuminate as well as to cast the world in shadow, to heal and inspire and conversely to evoke unsettling emotions. “I remember looking out at the horizon and experiencing a feeling of fear and unease…. My work is about the underbelly of the beauty of nature – and the dark side of nature is its indifference.”²

Her inspirations are both literary and art historical – Melville; Emerson; German romanticism, specifically the work of Caspar David Friedrich; and the American Luminists, especially the paintings of Frederic Church and Martin Johnson Heade.

I began to see that the Luminists were not simply recording scenes; in fact, they did not make traditionally realistic paintings at all….they attempted to recreate a landscape’s experience for the viewer…. Depicting the way the world actually looked was not nearly as important as conveying the sensation, the spiritual essence of the landscape.³

April Gornik was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1953. She received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1976 and currently lives and works in New York.

¹ Kristine McKenna, “The Allure of the Dark Side,” LA Times Calendar, May 1990, p. 3.

² April Gornik in Kristine McKenna, “The Allure of the Dark Side,” LA Times Calendar, May 1990, p. 3.

³ April Gornik, “Rooms in the View,” Art & Antiques, Summer 1988, p. 75.

DANESE GALLERY

41 East 57th Street, New York, NY, 10022

www.danesegallery.com

Colin Brant, Adam Baumgold Gallery, NYC - The Garden of the World (And Getting There)

Colin Brant

The Garden of the World (And Getting There)

Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York

October 18 — November 24, 2001

Adam Baumgold Gallery presents the first New York solo exhibition by Colin Brant of paintings "The Garden of the World (And Getting There)." These idiosyncratic oil paintings, relating to the discovery, exploration, and settlement of the American landscape, show a vision of a world that seems impractically optimistic and idealistic.

In his catalog essay for the exhibition, Charles Taliaferro (1) writes: "Colin Brant's work is informed by the idealized landscapes of early American folk painting. He captures the simple, vernacular coherence and eccentricities of the tradition, especially with his use of perspective, the scenes within scenes, and the shifts in depth of field. There is a stillness to these paintings which invites reverie, an unhurried exploration of forests, fields, lakes, grottos, and mountains. As viewers, we share in the adventures of travelers as they journey and rest through these pastoral constructions. At the same time there are surprising interruptions in which these worlds are called into question. We are allowed to enjoy these Arcadian scenes but we are also cautioned against being over earnest. In "Edge of the Dark Forest," for example, humor prevails as deer potter about and a squirrel clings desperately to a tree - all under the watchful eye of a contented owl. The paintings raise questions gently; I do not see the work in terms of pure satire. The irony in Brant's work, if there is any, is romantic. It is at once dissembling and heartening, gently checking out enthusiasm for the genuine charm and enchantment of the worlds he brings to us."

"The American folk tradition produced work which was explicitly personal, highly interpretive, and sometimes driven by profound values. Brant does not advance an explicit moral text like the American primitive artist Edward Hicks who framed paintings with edifying verse. Even so, there is a tenderness and humanity in Brant's romantic irony which I read as non-utopian and in favor of personality. Walt Whitman wrote that 'the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery.' The same might be said of one of Colin Brant's paintings."

Colin Brant lives and works in New York City. He is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award in painting.

(1) Charles Taliaferro teaches aesthetics at St. Olaf College; his writing has been published in the British Journal of Aesthetics and elsewhere.

ADAM BAUMGOLD GALLERY

74 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10021

www.adambaumgoldgallery.com

Olympus Camedia C-3020 Zoom Digital Camera

Olympus Camedia C-3020 Zoom Digital Camera

Olympus Camedia C-3020 Zoom

(c) Olympus America Inc.

Olympus Camedia C-3020 Zoom Back

(c) Olympus America Inc.

Olympus America Inc., today announced the C-3020 ZOOM 3.2 Megapixel (2048 x 1536 effective pixel resolution) filmless digital zoom camera to its line of award-winning digital cameras. The C-3020 ZOOM offers consumers an easy-to-use point & shoot camera with all the creative controls of an advanced camera - all for only $499.

Although simplicity of operation is clearly a focus, the Olympus C-3020 ZOOM is much more than a point & shoot camera. The Olympus C-3020 ZOOM combines a large collection of creative control features and high picture quality in a compact easy-to-use design. Based on the familiar and well-established Olympus C-3000 series of digital cameras, most of the advanced features of the award-winning Olympus C-3000 ZOOM are included: a 3X optical zoom aspherical glass lens with continuous 2.5X digital telephoto for a 7.5X total seamless zoom (32-240mm equivalent); 6 mode flash with a slow synchro red-eye reduction mode; and a host of manual exposure adjustments - all for that perfect picture. In addition, DPOF compatibility in the camera allows for easy setup and printing of the photographs you select.

New in the Olympus C-3020 ZOOM is 5 Scene Program Modes, which make the perfect shot easy, plus the customizable "My Mode" setting; USB Auto-Connect ready for Windows XP and Mac OSX for fast downloads; user-friendly menu system; extended battery life; and Noise Reduction modes.

Unsurpassed Optics

Olympus digital cameras are well-known for their exceptionally high-quality images. Images captured with the Olympus C-3020 ZOOM produce photographs equivalent to that of many film-based cameras. This is achieved by a number of factors, including a "designed to be digital" truly world-class all glass 8-element 3X zoom lens with a fast f2.8-f11 aperture range, low compression ratios including an uncompressed mode, and a host of other sophisticated Olympus technologies. Because of these technologies, Olympus high quality images can be achieved above an 8" x 10" photo size.

New Features:

Noise Reduction System - Gives the user clean colors and sharp pictures. For exposures of 1/2 second or longer, the Noise Reduction Mode (when activated) automatically compares the original image with an image taken immediately after the first exposure with no light. This frame contains only the background noise. The Olympus C-3020 ZOOM then compares both images and cancels background noise in the original image for clearer, shaper pictures.

My Mode - Creates unique custom camera settings that can be accessed by simply turning the mode dial to the "My Mode" position.

New Scene Program Modes - Scene Program selects the perfect settings for portrait, sports, landscape-portrait, night-scene, and QuickTimeTM movie modes.

USB Auto-Connect - Connects to most any USB-compatible Windows computer (running Windows Me, 2000, or XP) or Macintosh (running MacOS 8.6 - OSX) in seconds. The camera is configured as an external hard disk for easy downloading of image files to computers without any additional software.

Extended Battery Life - New energy-saving circuitry gives longer battery life.

The Olympus C-3020 ZOOM will be available the end of October 2001 for $499. It includes a 16MB SmartMedia card, Auto-Connect USB cable, carrying strap, lens cap and retainer cord, 4 AA alkaline batteries, Camedia Master Software 2.5, manual, QuickStart Guide and remote control.

Suggested Retail Price: $599.95 Street Price: $499

Hughie O'Donoghue, Rubicon Gallery, Dublin - Naming the Fields

Hughie O'Donoghue : Naming the Fields

Rubicon Gallery, Dublin 

23 October - 24 November 2001

Naming the Fields is the first showing of new paintings by Hughie O’Donoghue in Ireland. The Rubicon Gallery is double in size to host the exhibition incorporating a street level space below their first floor gallery at No.10 St. Stephens Green. Hughie O’Donoghue is one of Irelands most important painters with an established reputation in the U.K., Europe and U.S.A.. He exhibits regularly with Rubicon Gallery Dublin, Purdy Hicks Gallery London, Galerie Karl Pfefferle Munich and Galerie Helmut Pabst Frankfurt and has recently featured in major museum exhibitions in Haus Der Kunst Munich, Irish Museum of Modern Art Dublin, Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester, Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge and he has a major project planned for 2002 at The Imperial War Museum London. He is represented in several public collections among them: The Hugh Lane Gallery and I.M.M.A. Dublin, The National gallery and The British Museum London, The Art Gallery of New South Wales Adelaide and Yale centre for British Art New Haven USA.

The focus in Naming the Fields is the idea of place and in particular the mythic and emotional attachment to particular ground. An exploration of how this resonates within human memory and in a very fundamental way affects who we think we are. An elderly aunt went to great pains to impress upon the artist, the names of the fields that surrounded the house where she and his mother were born. These were drawn out on a rough piece of paper with the translations from the Irish. In some cases the meanings remained unclear. Hughie O’Donoghue was affected by the poetry of this; the attempt to write things down on the rudimentary map, to try to record this truth. The new paintings take these texts and some names from the surrounding town lands as their starting point and attempt to begin to reconstruct some of this lost meaning, to give form to this remembered culture. The artist’s research yielded a 16th Century representation of County Mayo and the area of the Barony of Erris, his place of origin. Of this region, there is virtually nothing recorded - it is a tabula rasa. The paintings seek in some way to stand in this space. They are not descriptive or topographical evocations of a lost landscape but instead attempt to excavate personal and collective cultural memory. Their theme is identity and displacement and they seek in some way to trace and map this, a notion which is potent and relevant to many Irish people or indeed many displaced people.

Hughie O’Donoghue was born in Manchester in 1953. He earned a Masters in Fine Art from Goldsmiths University and for several years lived and worked in London. In 1995 he bought a house and moved his family and his studio practise to a rural area in Co. Kilkenny Ireland. Since relocating to Ireland, Hughie O’Donoghue has explored ideas around Memory and History. His source, in most cases, is a documentary archive of letters, photographs and ephemera inherited after his father’s death. The artist’s father was born in Manchester in 1918 to an Irish immigrant family and was conscripted into the British Army at the outbreak of War. The material relates to family history in general, but in particular detail to the period of the Second World War in which his father was involved. Hughie O’Donoghue has made a number of exhibitions that dealt specifically with particular historic moments. Line of Retreat (1997) dealt with the 1940 retreat of the British Forces and the collapse of the French Republic;Crossing the Rapido (1998/99) addressed the crossing of the Rapido River south of Rome in 1944. Smoke Signals (2000) showed works from both these sequences.Corp (1998) at IMMA was an attempt to map underlying themes within the work over about 15 years and place them within a broader context. As well as being specific and personal each series of work attempts to use allegory and metaphor - ‘meaning’ as a product of engagement with the subject as opposed to something placed knowingly in the work. ‘Episodes from the Passion’ (a commissioned sequence of work, which filled the entire upper gallery spaces of the RHA in 1999) and other monumental works were recently selected for Schirn Kunsthalle’s survey exhibition Geschichte und Erinnerung Kunst der Gegenwart (History and Memory in Contemporary Art). Other works on this theme will also be included in the international exhibition Legacy of Absence due to open at Buchenwald in 2002.

Catalogue Available

RUBICON GALLERY

10 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2

www.rubicongallery.ie

Neo-Impressionism: The Circle of Paul Signac at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Neo-Impressionism: The Circle of Paul Signac 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 

October 2 – December 30, 2001

To complement the major exhibition Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents paintings, drawings, and watercolors – selected entirely from the Museum's own collections – by Charles Angrand, Henri-Edmond Cross, Maximilien Luce, Hippolyte Petitjean and other artists who, like Paul Signac, exuberantly followed the groundbreaking techniques of optical painting introduced in the 1880s by Georges Seurat. On view at the Metropolitan, Neo-Impressionism: The Circle of Paul Signac features some 60 works by these artists as well as by the better-known Paul Signac and George Seurat.

Flourishing from 1886 to 1906, the artists who worked in this avant-garde style came to be called Neo-Impressionists. The term was coined by art critic Félix Fénéon in his review of the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition (1886) to describe the work of Paul Signac, Georges Seurat, and, remarkably, Camille Pissarro, pioneers of a daring new vision that deviated distinctly from the waning Impressionist school.

Neo-Impressionism extended its reach to Belgium as well, where an avant-garde group known as Les Vingts (Les XX) embraced Seurat's ideals following the 1887 exhibition in Brussels of his masterpiece Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grand Jatte. Théo van Rysselberghe was a member of this highly visible Belgian circle, and the exhibition features several examples of his work. Even Henri Matisse briefly experimented with a Neo-Impressionist technique, prompted in part by the publication of Signac's manifesto From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism and by the invitation to paint with Paul Signac at his Saint-Tropez residence. Henri Matisse spent nearly a year in Signac's company.

Neo-Impressionists eschewed the random spontaneity of Impressionism. They sought to impose order on the visual experience of nature through codified, scientific principles. An optical theory known as mélange optique was formulated to describe the idea that separate, often contrasting colors would combine in the eye of the viewer to achieve the desired chromatic effect. The separation of color through individual strokes of pigment came to be known as "Divisionism" while the application of precise dots of paint came to be called "Pointillism." According to Neo-Impressionist theory, the application of paint in this fashion set up vibrations of colored light that produced an optical purity not achieved by the conventional mixing of pigments.

The rigid theoretical tenets of optical painting upheld by Neo-Impressionism's standard-bearer, George Seurat, gave way to a more fluid technique following his untimely death in 1891. In the luminous watercolors of Henri-Edmond Cross, for example, small, precise brush marks were replaced by long, mosaic-like strokes and clear, contrasting hues by a vibrant, saturated palette. While some artists like Henri Matisse merely flirted with Neo-Impressionism and others like Camille Pissarro renounced it entirely, Seurat's legacy extended well into the 20th century in the works of Henri-Edmond Cross and Paul Signac. Poised between Impressionism in the 19th century and Fauvism and Cubism in the 20th, Neo-Impressionism brought with it a new awareness of the formal aspects of paintings and a theoretical language by which to paint.

Neo-Impressionsim: The Circle of Paul Signac is organized by Dita Amory, Associate Curator, Robert Lehman Collection.

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

Robert Lehman Wing

www.metmuseum.org

Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

October 9 – December 30, 2001

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist, the first major retrospective of the artist's work in nearly 40 years. Best known for his luminous Mediterranean seascapes rendered in a myriad of "dots" – and later mosaic-like squares – of color, Paul Signac adapted the "pointillist" technique of Georges Seurat with stunning visual impact. The exhibition features 121 works, including some 70 oils and a rich selection of Signac's watercolors, drawings, and prints, providing an unprecedented overview of the artist's 50-year career.

Often viewed as "the second man of Neo-Impressionism," Paul Signac (1863-1935) has long been considered an artist of talent in the shadow of the more celebrated Seurat. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue will place the emphasis squarely on Signac's own personal accomplishments so that the unique character of his oeuvre, his artistic process, and the full range of his activities, relationships, and contributions are illuminated.

"This expansive survey exhibition will offer both scholars and the public the best opportunity in some 40 years to reassess the career of Neo-Impressionist painter Paul Signac," commented Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Long overshadowed by his more celebrated contemporary Georges Seurat, Signac created an extraordinary body of work – most remarkable are his shimmering seascapes and luminous views of the French Riviera. In these works of vivid and pulsating color, Signac fully explored and expanded upon the innovations of Seurat's divisionist painting technique creating images with an intensity and expressive power that belong to him alone."

Arranged chronologically, the selection of works traces Signac's development from an art based on observation and direct study of nature, through the rigor and optical precision of Neo-Impressionism to a more subjective art based on his own concepts of pictorial and social harmony. Essentially self-taught, Signac's first works, plein-air studies painted in the early 1880s in Paris and its neighboring suburbs, reveal the lessons he absorbed from Monet, Guillaumin, Caillebotte, and other Impressionists whose examples were his starting point.

By the end of the decade, Seurat's art was the crucial catalyst for the evolution of Signac's painting, providing a model for his technique, his manner of working and even, on occasion, the design of his compositions. Notwithstanding Signac's romantic bent, his more tactile brushstrokes and his stronger color contrasts, it was not until the 1890s – after the death of Seurat – that his work fully came into its own. Paul Signac developed a bolder and looser technique, relying increasingly on the dramatic and architectonic play of color. His discovery of “the joy of watercolor” in 1892 – a medium in which, after Cézanne, he was to become the undisputed master in the 20th century – offered a vehicle for a freer and livelier means of expression, one well-suited to his restless, peripatetic lifestyle. In the best of his late works Signac combined the sensual legacy of his first pictures with the cool rationality of Neo-Impressionism to create images of extraordinary chromatic richness and feeling.

An avid yachtsman who settled in Saint-Tropez in 1892, Paul Signac is celebrated for his glorious views of port towns along the French coast and his resplendent seascapes. Prominently featured in the exhibition, these sea and harbor scenes in oil and watercolor will be joined by lesser known works, among them his early views of the industrialized suburbs of Paris, the vibrant watercolor still lifes of his maturity, and striking ink drawings he made at the end of his career. Paul Signac's extraordinary Portrait of Félix Fénéon (1890-91, Museum of Modern Art, New York) and his other ambitious figure compositions, The Dining Room (1886-87, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo), Sunday (1888-90, private collection), and Women at the Well (1892, Musée d'Orsay, Paris) complete the survey.

The planning of the exhibition was greatly facilitated by the recently published catalogue raisonné of Signac's work by Françoise Cachin, which combines her insight as the artist's granddaughter and acumen as an art historian. Her assistant on this publication, Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon, author of several articles and books devoted to Signac, contributed to the present catalogue and worked closely with the curators, Anne Distel, Chief Curator of the Musée d'Orsay, John Leighton, Director of the Van Gogh Museum, and Susan Alyson Stein, Associate Curator of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the selection of works for the exhibition.

A fully illustrated scholarly catalogue, with individual entries on the works included in the exhibition and six introductory essays, was published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press. The first three essays focus on Signac's respective efforts as a painter, as a watercolorist and draftsman, and as a printmaker. The final essays discuss Signac's myriad relationships with other artists and his activities as a writer, spokesman for the Neo-Impressionist movement, exhibition organizer, political and social activist, yachtsman, and collector. The main body of the book, which provides in-depth entries and color plates for 182 works, is divided into four sections, each prefaced by an overview of the chronological period – Impressionism: 1883-1885; Neo-Impressionism, 1886-1891; Saint-Tropez, 1892-1906; and Ports and Travels: Signac in the Twentieth Century.

To coincide with Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist, the Metropolitan Museum of Art presents a complementary exhibition, Neo-Impressionism: The Circle of Paul Signac in the Robert Lehman Wing. Drawn from the Museum's permanent collection, it features approximately 60 paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints by Paul Signac, Georges Seurat, Maximilen Luce, Henri-Edmond Cross, and Charles Angrand that provides a context for appreciating Signac's achievements in relation to others in the Neo-Impressionist circle.

The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Réunion des musées nationaux/Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

www.metmuseum.org

Kenneth Noland : New Circles at Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London

Kenneth Noland : New Circles

Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London

3 October - 5 November 2001

This exhibition at the Bernard Jacobson Gallery is Kenneth Noland’s first in London for 20 years and gives us a opportunity to look again at the career of this important artist.

Kenneth Noland is a major figure in American abstract painting. After visiting Helen Frankenthaler with Clement Greenberg in the late 50s he and Morris Louis developed the method of staining bare canvas with pure colour. This development gave permission for minimalism to take shape. The early paintings were concentric circles of different colours usually with a painterly flare on the outer edge. Subsequently Kenneth Noland used massively extended rectangles, chevrons flared shapes and surfboard shapes. Concerned with making apparent the fact of the painting itself without outside references he used symmetrical compositions where the shapes on the canvas echoed or were referential to the shape of the canvas.

For these new paintings Kenneth Noland has returned to a format which he first used in the late 50s, the circle in the square. These New Circles are, however, different to the earlier ones, the surface slickly painted, the colours vibrant but synthetic. They seem almost high-tech and forbidding in contrast to the inviting matte surfaces and warm colour of the earlier work. In some cases metallic paint is used in others a dichromatic paint giving the paintings an optical effect.

Now in his 70’s Kenneth Noland has continued to be influential to generations of younger artists from Frank Stella to the artist/critic Matthew Collings. A revival of interest in colour field painting has resulted in a target painting by Kenneth Noland from the ‘60s selling at auction recently for nearly $800,000

In critic Karen Wilkin's words "it is neither an overstatement nor an over simplification to say that his recent Circle pictures are like a diary of everything Noland has discovered in his lifetime."

Kenneth Noland is represented in many major museum collections throughout the world including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Tate Gallery, London.

BERNARD JACOBSON GALLERY

14A Clifford Street, London W1S 4JX

www.jacobsongallery.co.uk

Richard Sapper, Museum of Art and Design, Helsinki

Richard Sapper
Museum of Art and Design, Helsinki
October 4 - November 4, 2001

Richard Sapper, born in 1932 in Munich, has interests scattered over a number of different disciplines. After studying philosophy, anatomy, graphics and engineering, and obtaining the degree in economical sciences at the Univerity of Munich, he entered in 1956 into the styling department of Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart.

In 1958 he went to Italy, establishing himself in Milan and working first for Gio Ponti, then as a designer for "La Rinascente" department store chain, then until 1977 for a part of his activity with Marco Zanuso, in whose studio prize-winning radio and television receivers, telephone, the plastic children chair and a mobile living unit were designed. In 1959 he edited, together with Mario Spagnol, the Italian publication of the diaries of Paul Klee. In 1968 he joined Pio Manzů and William L. Plumb in organizing an exhibition of advanced architectural technology for the 14th Triennale, in Milan. From 1970 to 1976 he worked as a consultant to FIAT for designing test vehicles and to Pirelli, advising on the design of new tires tread patterns.

In 1971 he participated at the exhibition "Italy, the New Domestic Landscape"at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, presenting his mobile living unit designed with Zanuso. In 1972 he collaborated with Gae Aulenti in organizing a study group to develop urban transit systems; he continued working in this field until the exhibit at the 16th Triennale, in 1979.

Since 1980 Richard Sapper is the worldwide product design consultant of the IBM Corporation, working at the same time for a number of other companies.

Professor of Industrial Design at the Kustakademie in Stuttgart since 1986, he has taught at Yale, Vienna, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Milan (at the Domus Academy) and in 1995 in Beijing. In 1993 he has held personal exhibitions at the Museum of Applied Arts in Cologne, in Hamburg and in New York at the Museum of Modern Art.

His products have won the prestigious Italian prize "Compasso d’Oro" six times (in 1998 for the expresso coffee machine "Cobán Nespresso"), as well as a number of other international design prizes such as the "BIO Gold Medal", "Die Gute Form", etc. Some of his creations, like the "Tizio" lamp for Artemide and the "9090" coffee maker for Alessi, have been added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Richard Sapper is a honorary member of the Royal Society of Arts since 1988.

Today his main interests are complex systems, such as residential landscapes, office seating, electronic measuring devices and kitchen appliances.

MUSEUM OF ART AND DESIGN, HELSINKI
Korkeavuorenkatu 23, 00130 Helsinki
www.designmuseum.fi

Epson Colorio PM-730C Printer

The Epson Colorio PM-730C share the 4-pl microdots and MSDT (Multi-Size Dot Technology) with the higher-ranking model of Colorio serie (Colorio PM-890C), yielding attractive photo output with high 1440 dpi resolution.

This printer is designed for users who wish to print out photos in a variety of forms, and it come packed with fun photo output functions. For starters, it support BorderFree printing on cut paper, a function that has enjoyed strong popularity since its announcement at the end of 2000. The printer let the user enjoy printing out BorderFree photos of size L and 2L, just right for albums, and also greeting postcards, with no border at all, on official-size inkjet postcards. The Epson Colorio PM-730C is the first low-price printer to offer BorderFree printing.

The Epson Colorio PM-730C is ready to use Print Image Matching, the advanced technology with high digital camera compatibility that is quickly gaining popularity. When using a combination of a digital camera with this function and a printer compatible with it, Print Image Matching applies a print command to photo data when the digital camera captures it, and the printer uses this command to print. The resulting data can faithfully recreate the intended color, brightness, etc. as captured by the digital camera or record the desired coloring optimized by the user at the site of the image, thus yielding perfect digital photo printouts.

Epson PhotoQuicker 3.1, software for easily printing high-quality photos, comes standard with the Epson Colorio PM-730C. Epson PhotoQuicker 3.1 is compatible with the new Print Image Framer function. This means that in addition to the standard layouts found in Epson PhotoQuicker3.1, users can add other desired frame layouts to their printed photos, including photo frames and New Year and other seasonal frames.

Finally, the Epson Colorio PM-730C already had standard-equipment drivers for the new Windows XP operating system set to launch in November 2001. Drivers also come standard for Windows 95/98/Me/2000/NT4.0 and for Macintosh. The printer driver is packed full of functions, including a new feature that lets even low-resolution images (such as those downloaded from the Internet) print out attractively, and functions suited for text document printing, such as multi-page printing and stamp marks.

Launch date for Japan: October 5, 2001 - Japanese Price (exc. tax): 24,800 yen

Photo (c) 2001 - Seiko Epson Corp. - All rights reserved

Epson Colorio PM-830C Printer

The Epson Colorio PM-830C share the 4-pl microdots and MSDT (Multi-Size Dot Technology) with the higher-ranking model of Colorio serie (Colorio PM-890C), yielding attractive photo output with high 1440 dpi resolution.

This printer is designed for users who wish to print out photos in a variety of forms, and it come packed with fun photo output functions. For starters, it support BorderFree printing on cut paper, a function that has enjoyed strong popularity since its announcement at the end of 2000. The printer let the user enjoy printing out BorderFree photos of size L and 2L, just right for albums, and also greeting postcards, with no border at all, on official-size inkjet postcards. The Epson Colorio PM-830C have greatly enhanced BorderFreeTM printing speed that is 70% faster than the earlier release Epson Colorio PM-880C in L size [1].

The Epson Colorio PM-830C offer roll paper printing for continuous BorderFree printing on roll paper as a standard feature. Users can print a succession of digital camera images on roll paper and even print out striking panoramic shots with ease. This is space-saving model with a standard-equipment roll paper holder that can be mounted simultaneously with the cut paper sheet guide.

The Epson Colorio PM-830C is ready to use Print Image Matching, the advanced technology with high digital camera compatibility that is quickly gaining popularity. When using a combination of a digital camera with this function and a printer compatible with it, Print Image Matching applies a print command to photo data when the digital camera captures it, and the printer uses this command to print. The resulting data can faithfully recreate the intended color, brightness, etc. as captured by the digital camera or record the desired coloring optimized by the user at the site of the image, thus yielding perfect digital photo printouts.

Epson PhotoQuicker 3.1, software for easily printing high-quality photos, comes standard with the Epson Colorio PM-830C. Epson PhotoQuicker 3.1 is compatible with the new Print Image Framer function. This means that in addition to the standard layouts found in Epson PhotoQuicker3.1, users can add other desired frame layouts to their printed photos, including photo frames and New Year and other seasonal frames.

Finally, the Epson Colorio PM-830C already had standard-equipment drivers for the new Windows XP operating system set to launch in November 2001. Drivers also come standard for Windows 95/98/Me/2000/NT4.0 and for Macintosh. The printer driver is packed full of functions, including a new feature that lets even low-resolution images (such as those downloaded from the Internet) print out attractively, and functions suited for text document printing, such as multi-page printing and stamp marks. The Epson Colorio PM-830C also had the "Duplex Printing Function" that can be set from the driver for large text document printing jobs. Used in tandem with plain paper for double-sided printing, this feature can prove remarkably economical for large jobs.

[1] Printing conditions: printing on PM photo paper, L size, cut paper, quality mode.

Launch date for Japan: October 5, 2001 - Japanese Price (exc. tax): 34,800 yen

Photo (c) 2001 - Seiko Epson Corp. - All rights reserved

Epson Colorio PM-890C Printer

The Epson Colorio PM-890C represents a doubling of resolution from 1440 dpi to 2880 dpi. Microdots as small as 4 pl and MSDT (Multi-Size Dot Technology) produce rich image gradation.

It is designed for users who wish to print out photos in a variety of forms, and this printer come packed with fun photo output functions. For starters, it support BorderFree printing on cut paper, a function that has enjoyed strong popularity since its announcement at the end of last year. The printer let the user enjoy printing out BorderFree photos of size L and 2L, just right for albums, and also greeting postcards, with no border at all, on official-size inkjet postcards. The Epson Colorio PM-890C had greatly enhanced BorderFree printing speed that is 70% faster than the earlier release Epson Colorio PM-880C in L size [1].

The Epson Colorio PM-890C offer roll paper printing for continuous BorderFree printing on roll paper as a standard feature. Users can print a succession of digital camera images on roll paper and even print out striking panoramic shots with ease. This is space-saving model with a standard-equipment roll paper holder that can be mounted simultaneously with the cut paper sheet guide.

The Epson Colorio PM-890C, like the earlier high-end model Epson Colorio PM-920C, is equipped to print CD-R media and thick paper. It prints directly on widely available white-label CD-R media. This function works not only on the 12-cm CD-R media as in the past but also 8-cm CD-Rs.

Using the standard-equipment EPSON CD Direct Print2 utility, users can easily print original photo and audio CD-R labels. It also handles thick paper media up to 2.5 mm, making it a good choice for creating in-store displays.

The Epson Colorio PM-890C is ready to use Print Image Matching, the advanced technology with high digital camera compatibility that is quickly gaining popularity. When using a combination of a digital camera with this function and a printer compatible with it, Print Image Matching applies a print command to photo data when the digital camera captures it, and the printer uses this command to print. The resulting data can faithfully recreate the intended color, brightness, etc. as captured by the digital camera or record the desired coloring optimized by the user at the site of the image, thus yielding perfect digital photo printouts.

Epson PhotoQuicker 3.1, software for easily printing high-quality photos, comes standard with the Epson Colorio PM-890C. Epson PhotoQuicker 3.1 is compatible with the new Print Image Framer function. This means that in addition to the standard layouts found in Epson PhotoQuicker3.1, users can add other desired frame layouts to their printed photos, including photo frames and New Year and other seasonal frames.

Finally, the Epson Colorio PM-890C already had standard-equipment drivers for the new Windows XP operating system set to launch in November 2001. Drivers also come standard for Windows 95/98/Me/2000/NT4.0 and for Macintosh. The printer driver is packed full of functions, including a new feature that lets even low-resolution images (such as those downloaded from the Internet) print out attractively, and functions suited for text document printing, such as multi-page printing and stamp marks. The Epson Colorio PM-890C also had the "Duplex Printing Function" that can be set from the driver for large text document printing jobs. Used in tandem with plain paper for double-sided printing, this feature can prove remarkably economical for large jobs.

[1] Printing conditions: printing on PM photo paper, L size, cut paper, quality mode.

Photo (c) 2001 - Seiko Epson Corp. - All rights reserved

Epson Colorio Serie New Printers

Seiko Epson Corporation announce the Epson Colorio PM-890C printer with "Multi Play Print" for 2880-dpi high image quality, CD-R label printing and BorderFree (entire surface) printing; the Epson Colorio PM-830C for BorderFree and roll paper printing; and the Epson Colorio PM-730C entry-level model, the first low-price printer to offer BorderFree printing. These three products launch October 5, 2001 from Epson Sales Japan.

Prices (excluding tax) and launch date for these products are as below.

Epson Colorio PM-890C - Price (exc. tax): 45,800 yen

Epson Colorio PM-830C - Price (exc. tax): 34,800 yen

Epson Colorio PM-730C - Price (exc. tax): 24,800 yen

Launch date for the three models: October 5, 2001

Epson forecasts that sales of the Epson Colorio series, including four new products, will reach 4.5 million units in the next one year.