Max Eastley, Takehisa Kosugi, Walter Marchetti, Resonance104.4fm - Pioneers of sound art exhibition at Raven Row, London

Exhibition: Gone with the Wind 
Max Eastley, Takehisa Kosugi, Walter Marchetti, Resonance104.4fm  
Raven Row, London 
Through 17 July 2011 

RAVEN ROW LONDON

This exhibition brings together three pioneers of sound art, Max Eastley, Takehisa Kosugi and Walter Marchetti. Each artist has developed a distinct approach to the problem of representing immateriality, while sharing a lightness of touch, approaching sound with patience, restraint and fidelity. As well as presenting new and historic work, the exhibition comprise live performance, and a selection of material from the artists' substantial archives.

MAX EASTLEY (born 1944, UK) is an artist and musician whose sound sculptures play on a balance between the natural environment and human intervention. His musical collaborations include the 1975 album New And Rediscovered Musical Instruments with David Toop, produced by Brian Eno. His response to the interior of Raven Row is a meditation on the 18th century Picturesque, achieved with 21st century technology and a ‘Bergsonian’ approach to time. 

TAKEHISA KOSUGI (born 1938, Japan) is a major figure in modernist sound art. In the early 1960s his event pieces were realised by Fluxus in Europe and the USA. Kosugi pioneered the development of Japanese experimental music with Group ONGAKU and the Taj Mahal Travellers. Since 1977 he has been a composer/performer at Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and became its Music Director in 1995. As well as archival material, Takehisa Kosugi will present a number of works including the sound installation Mano-Dharma, electronic, 1967/2011.

WALTER MARCHETTI (born 1931, Italy) was a founder member of ZAJ, a recalcitrant Mediterranean parallel to Fluxus, which in the 1960s produced action-music-performances, anarchic gags, and elegant assaults on the music establishment. Marchetti befriended John Cage in 1958, and went on to collaborate with him on a number of projects. His work has often focused on the grand piano – for more than 50 years he has been preparing them like a chef intent on marinating sound. Two of Walter Marchetti's pianos, alongside works from Emanuele Carcano's Collection, are exhibited. 

WALTER MARCHETTI

Walter Marchetti, Musica da camera n. 182

Milano, Pianofortissimo, 

Fondazione Mudima, January 1990. 

Photograph by Fabrizio Garghetti 

Courtesy of Raven Row, London

Alongside these positions, RESONANCE104.4FM is installed at Raven Row for the duration of the exhibition, broadcasting, and hosting workshops and live events, as well as presenting an 'overhung' sound installation – the Resonance Open – with contributions solicited from local and international sound artists. Resonance104.4fm is the world’s first radio art station, established by London Musicians’ Collective, it started broadcasting on May 1st 2002. Its brief is to provide a radical alternative to the universal formulae of mainstream broadcasting.

The exhibition is curated by ED BAXTER, director of Resonance104.4fm.

RAVEN ROW, LONDON, UK
56 Artillery Lane
London E1 7LS

www.ravenrow.org

Resonance104.4fm website: www.resonancefm.com

Beauty and Bounty: American Art in an Age of Exploration - A survey of great 19th and 20th-century American landscape paintings and photographs presented by the Seattle Art Museum

Beauty and Bounty

American Art in an Age of Exploration 

SAM - Seattle Art Museum 

June 30 - September 11, 2011

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) presents a survey of great 19th and 20th-century American landscape paintings and photographs in the exhibition BEAUTY AND BOUNTY: AMERICAN ART IN AN AGE OF EXPLORATION. Through more than 100 works, including an in-depth presentation of the Seattle Art Museum’s painting Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870) by Albert Bierstadt, Beauty and Bounty shows American artists’ responses as they encountered the North American continent’s ever-expanding vastness of natural beauty and nature’s bounty and provides a rare opportunity to view great works of American art from private collections, which have rarely – or never – been seen by the public. 

In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, painters including Sanford Gifford, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran gave form to landscapes of once unimaginable character, as they crossed the continent on expeditions through the plains and the mountains of the Great West. Beauty and Bounty includes about 45 of these majestic works – many of which are held in private collections and were previously unknown to the public. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a gallery devoted to one painting: Albert Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870), which is dramatically displayed to convey its 19th-century context, alongside objects that the artist himself had collected during his travels and used as source material for the painting. 

Also included in the exhibition are approximately 60 landscape photographs, including mammoth plate images by pioneers of the western photography, including Carleton Watkins, Edward Muybridge, and Timothy O’Sullivan. 

“Many would be surprised by the wealth of important American landscape paintings and photographs that exist in private collections in the Seattle area,” said PATRICIA JUNKER, the Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art at SAM. “We are so grateful for the generosity of these collectors who have loaned their works, allowing our visitors to deepen their understanding of the American experience, through the eyes and experiences of some of our country’s greatest 19th and early 20th-century artists.” 

The paintings and photographs on view demonstrate that it was often these artist-explorers who were raising important questions about humankind’s place in the world and how best to respond to a continent that many at the time viewed as a divine blessing of beauty and bounty from nature. Naturalists John Muir and Gifford Pinchot had close relationships with painters during this period, and the works of art in the exhibition suggest the distinct philosophical ideals of preservation and conservation promoted by these influential men. 

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PAINTING

Visitors to Beauty and Bounty begin by moving through a suite of galleries filled with nearly 45 grand landscape paintings by some of the late 19th-century’s greatest American artists. This was a time of great fascination with and optimism about westward expansion in the United States. While artists discovered the vast beauty of nature throughout the growing nation, the west – and the Pacific Northwest in particular – was viewed as the “next great thing” for the United States – a land of unspoiled beauty and seemingly boundless natural resources. A number of artists traveled west, where they sketched the largely untouched landscapes they found, often returning to their studios on the East Coast to produce their large-scale oil paintings to be shared with the public. In paintings such as Albert Bierstadt’s Sunrise, Yosemite Valley (1865), Sydney Laurence’s Mount McKinley (1914) and many others, the artists placed themselves – and, subsequently their viewers – right in the middle of these majestic landscapes. Through their paintings, these artists brought home with them the mystique of fabled places such as Yosemite and Yellowstone, the Columbia River and the Pacific coast of Washington State, to be experienced by lay-people across the country. 

The exhibition includes both oil sketches created on-the-spot within these natural surroundings and highly finished works from the artists’ studios. Also on view are a number of partings of landscapes from the eastern half of the United States, such as John Frederick Kensett’s paintings Narragansett Bay (1861) and Lake George (ca. 1865), and Winslow Homer’s An Adirondack Lake (1870). 

ALBERT BIERSTADT’S PUGET SOUND ON THE PACIFIC COAST

The presentation of landscape paintings in Beauty and Bounty culminates in a deep exploration of the Seattle Art Museum’s own grand painting, Albert Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870). New research by SAM curator Patricia Junker has revealed insights into the painting that allow a deeper understanding of the artist’s intent, as well as what the painting would have meant to his American audiences back on the East Coast. Bierstadt, Junker has learned, traveled through Oregon and up the coast of the Washington Territory in 1863, sketching and gathering source material that would inform this painting and others. Including field sketches, native artifacts from Bierstadt’s personal collection, photographs, and popular prints, this gallery brings together much of the material that fueled Bierstadt’s imagination and helped shape his composition. 

Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast will be installed in a manner reminiscent of how it would have been experienced in 1870. At that time, patrons would have visited Bierstadt’s studio to see the painting and learn about the natural wonders he witnessed on his travels. Viewers would spend a large amount of time looking deeply at the image, the artist meticulously walking them through the story and the details of the painting. At SAM, the painting will be accompanied by an audio feature that replicates this experience, using descriptive text taken from nineteenth-century commentary on the painting. 

Rather than a traditional exhibition catalogue, Beauty and Bounty will be accompanied by a book that outlines Patricia Junker’s new findings about this painting from SAM’s collection. Albert Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast: A Superb Vision of Dreamland is co-published by the Seattle Art Museum and the University of Washington Press and was produced by Marquand Books, Seattle. It has been underwritten by the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc. 

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY

By the late-nineteenth century, the role of photographers as artists, as well as documentarians, was firmly established. Much like their counterparts working in paint, landscape photographers grappled with how to portray the vast landscapes they encountered. They also struggled with similar philosophical issues, as they witnessed the pull between those who desired to maintain the integrity of these pristine natural landscapes and those who felt a balance could be struck between conservation and management of the natural resources these areas harbored. Mammoth plate photographs from the 1880s by Frank Jay Haynes, for example, present stunningly beautiful views of Yellowstone’s canyons and waterfalls, while a series of equally beautiful photographs by Darius Kinsey from the turn of the 20th century document the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest and its toll on the land and forests of the region. Other large-scale photographs on display include works by William Henry Jackson, Carleton E. Watkins, Timothy O’Sullivan and more. 

The exhibition also includes a gallery of stereograph images by Edward Muybridge, Charles Bierstadt and others, as well as a rare, 1853 Daguerreotype by Platt Babbitt of a view at Niagara Falls. 

Beauty and Bounty: American Art in an Age of Exploration has been organized by Patricia Junker, the Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art at the Seattle Art Museum. 

This exhibition is organized by the Seattle Art Museum. Members of the Visionary Circle (Thomas W. Barwick, Jeffrey and Susan Brotman, Barney A. Ebsworth, Jon and Mary Shirley, Virginia and Bagley Wright, Ann P. Wyckoff) have provided crucial funding to make that exhibition possible. Presenting Sponsor is Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Exhibition Sponsors are Christie's and The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc. Additional support is provided by SAM's American Art Endowment and contributors to the Annual Fund. Media Sponsor is King 5 Television. Airline Sponsor is Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air. 

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM 

SAM Downtown, Fourth Floor, Simonyi Special Exhibition Gallerie

www.seattleartmuseum.org

The Impressionists and Their Influence, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock

The Impressionists and Their Influence

Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock

Through June 26, 2011

Organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and the Arkansas Arts Center, the exhibition THE IMPRESSIONISTS AND THEIR INFLUENCE, is on view in Little Rock since April 1 through June 26, 2011.

In late 19th century Paris, a group of artists broke from long-standing tradition when they moved outdoors to paint. These artists, the Impressionists, captured the world around them in new ways creating colorful, light-filled scenes of carefree summer outings, riverbanks and seashores, private gardens, public parks, dance halls, cafés and the people who filled them.  

This exhibition brings together beautiful paintings and intimate works on paper by such French artists as Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, as well as works by major Post-Impressionist artists Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and Paul Signac. In addition, the show features works by American artists, such as Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, and Theodore Robinson, who fell under the influence of the Impressionists. Featuring more than 100 works from the collections of the High Museum of Art, the Arkansas Arts Center, and private collections, The Impressionists and Their Influence is a splendid opportunity to explore the movement that became Impressionism. 

ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, LITTLE ROCK 
www.arkarts.com

IMMA 20th Anniversary: Twenty exhibition, Dublin, Ireland

Twenty: Celebrating 20 Years of the Irish Museum of Modern Art 

IMMA, Dublin

Through 31 October 2011

Twenty features 20 younger-generation Irish and international artists, whose work is increasing prominent in the global visual arts arena.  The exhibition is the centrepiece of a wide-ranging programme celebrating the 20th anniversary of the foundation of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) on Friday 27 May 2011. Twenty: Celebrating 20 Years of the Irish Museum of Modern Art continues until 31 October 2011. Many of the works are being shown for the first time, having recently been acquired with special funding from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The new works echo the Museum’s acquisition 20 years ago of works by leading younger artists of the day, many of whom went on to have a close and mutually beneficial relationships with IMMA in the intervening years. 

Drawn from IMMA’s Collection, the works in Twenty include installations, photography, painting and sculpture. Commonalties and dialogues appear between the works, but the exhibition seeks to allow sufficient space that each may be viewed as representing an individual practice. For example, Katie Holten’s 137.5 / It started on the c train, 2002, a web-like wall installation made from crochet, started on the subway in New York and continued as the artist traveled around Eastern Europe. Another work, Memorial Gardens, 2008, by Niamh O’Malley was made while O’Malley was participating in IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme. It presents footage taken in the nearby WarMemorial Gardens in Islandbridge projected on to etched-primed aluminum, creating an unreal, chimera type effect of distance and loss. Works by Orla Barry, Stephen Brandes, Nina Canell, Fergus Feehily, Patrick M FitzGerald, John Gerrard, David Godbold, Paddy Jolley, Nevan Lahart, Niamh McCann, Willie McKeown, Perry Ogden, Liam O'Callaghan, Alan Phelan, Garrett Phelan, Eva Rothschild and Corban Walker are also shown, together with a borrowed piece by Irish artist Sean Lynch. 

Many of the Irish artists live abroad – in New York, Berlin, Vienna or London – reflecting the increasingly international environment in which their work is now seen.  The significance of IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme, established in 1994, is also evident as many of the artists in Twenty have participated in the programme at some point, including Orla Barry, David Godbold, Liam O’Callaghan, Niamh O’Malley, Sean Lynch, Paddy Jolley, Katie Holten, Nevan Lahart, Alan Phelan and Garrett Phelan. 

Irish Museum of Modern Art 

Royal Hospital 

Kilmainham 

Dublin 8 

IRELAND 

www.imma.ie

Photographs and Drawings from the Galleria Civica Modena Collections

THE GALLERIA CIVICA DI MODENA COLLECTION: PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS FROM THE COLLECTIONS

3 April - 17 July 2011 

Davide Tranchina, Gorilla, 2000, 

from the series “Safari metropolitano” (Metropolitan Safari)

Donated to the Galleria Civica di Modena Photography Collection. 

Courtesy of the Galleria Civica di Modena.

On Saturday 2nd April 2011 at 6pm the Galleria Civica di Modena will inaugurate a long-term project aimed at displaying the photographs and drawings of the permanent collections in turn and on a regular basis. Until the 17th July the Sala grande and the Sale superiori of the Palazzo will in fact feature the first display of the collections, organised and co-produced by the Galleria Civica di Modena and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena. 

The Sala grande will host a selection of photographs showing broad views and tiny glimpses of Modena captured throughout the second half of the 20th century by great photographers such as Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Luigi Ghirri and Mimmo Jodice. A number of works from a set of 50 images (part of a major photo shoot on the city in 2009) donated by Jodice to the Galleria Civica di Modena Collection will also be presented here for the first time.

The exhibition then continues with a selection from the 1200 black & white images (which also only recently became part of the Collection), part of Franco Vaccari’s project “C’ero anch’io”, presented on the occasion of the solo exhibition dedicated to the artist in 2007, held between the Palazzina dei Giardini and the Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini. Among the artists chosen for this show there is also Franco Fontana, the donator of the main corpus of the Collection itself, and who on this particular occasion has donated four of his own personal visions of 1970’s Modena.

From the series “Safari Metropolitano”, (1998-2000), Davide Tranchina has picked out three images that offer an estranging and at the same time ironic vision of the urban outskirts, to be donated to the Gallery.

In the Sale superiori, works on paper by Modenese artists will be displayed, artists whose careers are documented within the Drawing Collection, from the early 20th century right up to the present day. The entrance chamber hosts works in the collection by artists such as Davide Benati, Carlo Cremaschi, Giuliano Della Casa, Franco Guerzoni, Giovanni Manfredini, Wainer Vaccari, right up to Andrea Chiesi and Roberto Cuoghi. The second room, instead, is dedicated to artistic figures who have acquired a historic standing, such as Nereo Annovi, Vittorio Magelli, Mario Molinari, Tino Pelloni, Enrico Prampolini, Pompeo Vecchiati and Mario Venturelli. 

The last two spaces will be given over to Lucio Riva and Gianni Valbonesi, to whom a tribute will be paid – thanks to the heritage of the Collection and the new purchases – in the light of the thorough and coherent artistic activity which he has carried out over the course of the last half century.

GALLERIA CIVICA DI MODENA

La collezione della Galleria Civica di Modena: fotografie e disegni dalle Raccolte 

Palazzo Santa Margherita 

Corso Canalgrande 103 

41121 Modena 

www.galleriacivicadimodena.it 

Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840-1916 - Exhibition in Paris and Montpellier at the Grand Palais and Fabre Museum

Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840-1916 

Grand Palais - Galeries nationales, Paris 

23 March - 20 June 2011 

Musée Fabre, Montpellier 

7 July - 16 october 2011 

The exhibition ODILE REDON: PRINCE OF DREAMS, 1840-1916 is on view in France in Paris through June 2011 and will be on view in Montpellier (South of France) at Fabre museum from July to October 2011. An exhibition organised by the Rmn-Grand Palais, the Musée d’Orsay and the musée Fabre de Montpellier Agglomération. With special support from the Bibliothèque nationale de France.  

Although he was a contemporary of the Impressionists (he took part in the group’s last exhibition in 1886), ODILON REDON (Bordeaux 1840 - Paris 1916) remains the champion of mystery and the subconscious in a period which focused on reality and objectivity. One of the leaders in the art world at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he was a key figure in early symbolism, with his charcoals and lithographs (the famous noirs -blacks) before being admired for his pastels and paintings by the young generation of artists in love with colour, the Nabis and the Fauves. He was then regarded as one of the precursors of surrealism. 

The exhibition in the Galeries nationales-Grand Palais is a real rediscovery of this artist. A number of major exhibitions have recently been devoted to him in other parts of the world -Chicago and London, 1994; Frankfurt, 2007-, but this retrospective is the first in Paris since the exhibition in the Orangerie in 1956. It is based on the study of many unpublished documents which shed new light on Redon’s work. In particular it makes systematic use of his “book of reason” (Paris, Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet), in which he jotted down the titles and dates of his works. The book is on display and was published in the appendix to the catalogue. 

Some hundred and eighty paintings, pastels, charcoals and drawings, many unpublished, and a major set of engravings and lithographs (about a hundred prints, courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France-French National Library, Paris) are arranged in chronological  order to emphasise the development in Redon’s style and themes, from the anguished period of the Noirs to the explosion of colour in his last works, in a gradual progression from shade to light. For the first time, the great mural that he painted for his patron Robert de Domecy will be displayed in its original size and layout. Redon’s work in the decorative arts will also be on show, thanks to major loans from the Mobilier national. 

ODILON REDON BIOGRAPHY

Despite the overall continuity of Odilon Redon' style throughout his career, three periods can be distinguished.  

Odilon Redon: Early years to 1890 

From Odilon Redon’ youth and his training in etching under the mysterious Rodolphe Bresdin (1822-1885) in Bordeaux, until the beginning of the Noirs [Blacks] (charcoal drawings, lithographs) which, from his first collection of lithographs (Dans le Reve [In the Dream], 1879), made his reputation in the budding symbolism movement, particularly in literary circles. Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) paid homage to him in his famous novel A rebours (Against the Grain, 1884), whose archetypal refined, decadent hero fervently collected Redon’s  work. His references are Darwin and the mysteries of the origins of the world but also the sumptuous macabre works of Edgar Allen Poe and Goya. The extraordinary beauty of his lithographs is due to an accomplished technique and velvety blacks, which were said to be inimitable. 

Odilon Redon: From 1892 the end of the century 

This is the period when the dreams of the Noirs were gradually transposed into colour. Yeux clos (Closed Eyes 1890, Paris, Musée d’Orsay), of which there is a painting and a lithograph, is a turning point after which Redon approached colour in a new spirit. He used pastel with startling originality and, alongside Degas, is still one of the great masters of this medium. He became a major figure in symbolism, and mixed with Mallarmé and Gauguin.  

Odilon Redon in the twentieth century 

After 1899, Redon gave up lithography and charcoal drawing. Black and white gave way to vivid colour in increasingly large formats. Collectors competed for his mythological themes and brightly coloured flower paintings, a sign of his new peace of mind. It was during this period that Redon produced some of the great decorations which number among the lesser known masterpieces of the twentieth century, including the one in the Fontfroide abbey, which will be open to the public while the exhibition is showing at the Musée Fabre (Fabre museum) in Montpellier, in summer 2010. He won the admiration of Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse and the Fauves and in his last years he designed tapestry cartoons for the Manufacture des Gobelins. 

Head curator: Rodolphe Rapetti, general heritage curator, associate researcher at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art [National Institute of Art History, Paris]

Curators: 

Marie-Pierre Salé, chief curator at the Musée d’Orsay [Orsay Museum, Paris]

Valérie Sueur-Hermel, curator of the Print and Photography department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France [French National Library, Paris], head of the 19th century collections 

Exhibition design: Hubert Le Gall  

RMN - GRAND PALAIS, PARIS 

www.rmn.fr 

Information, tickets, download of audioguides on the website 

David LaChapelle Photos Exhibition at Kestner, Hanover

Photo Exhibition: David LaChapelle 

Earth laughs in flowers 

Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover 

Through May 8, 2011

In the first institutional solo exhibition in Germany of work by the famous American photographer DAVID LACHAPELLE (b 1964), the Kestnergesellschaft presents a series of new photographs. The series Earth Laughs in Flowers, which was created this year, refers to art-historical visual traditions but never loses sight of LaChapelle’s own artistic language. 

David LaChapelle 

Decadence: the insufficiency of all things attainable 

2008 

Edition 5/7 

Digital C-Print on Corrugated Cardboard 

266.9 x 914.4 x 134.3 cm 

© David LaChapelle 

Courtesy Fred Torres Collaborations; Galerie Rafael Jablonka, Köln 

The large-format still lifes in this series, with titles such as The Lovers, Concerning the Soul, Risk, or  America, seamlessly take up the principle of exaggeration that characterized the portraits of celebrities like Madonna, Pamela Anderson, Michael Jackson, Björk or David Bowie through which David LaChapelle himself has become famous since the 1990s. The portraits always contained art-historical references, along with a fear of emptiness, a love of bad taste, an ugly beauty, but David LaChapelle’s recent works now show an explicit compositional affinity to Baroque floral still lifes (as we can see with the work Early Fall). Plants, fruits and objects, in place of human bodies, now bear witness to human pride, to the finiteness of life with its obsessions and compulsions, to pleasure and suffering. 

David LaChapelle 

Early Fall 

2008-2011 

Chromogenic print 

190,5 x 127 cm 

© David LaChapelle 

Courtesy Fred Torres Collaborations; Galerie Rafael Jablonka, Köln 

The title of the exhibition can also be read in the sense of the vanitas portrayals of impermanence and futility: the quotation ‘Earth laughs in flowers’ comes from the poem ‘Hamatreya’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson in which flowers are the earth’s laughter at the arrogant attitude of human beings who believe they can own the earth, although they themselves are transient and must return to it. But the title also speaks of an affirmative and allencompassing attitude, as LaChapelle himself puts it and seeks to translate into his pop visual language. His works are intended to be inclusive and easy to understand, and they address a wide audience. 

This is achieved through strategies of heightened media staging – as in the portraits – but also through universal motifs that are culturally rooted – as in Jesus is My Homeboy (2003), which is also shown in the exhibition. In this series LaChapelle worked with people from the street to stage scenes from the life of Jesus that are astonishing in their true-to-life, contemporary realization. This series is complemented by two paintings from the State Gallery of the Lower Saxony State Museum. These two works, Christuskopf [Head of Christ] (1904) by Erich Brunkal and The Entombment of Christ, a copy after Raffael by Casabene, enable the new works by David LaChapelle to be compared with and referred to traditional Christian iconography. 

 David LaChapelle 

Intervention (from the series Jesus is My Homeboy) 

2008

182.9 x 279.4 cm

© David LaChapelle

Courtesy Fred Torres Collaborations; Galerie Rafael Jablonka, Köln 

DAVID LACHAPELLE studied visual art at the North Carolina School of the Arts before moving to New York. There he studied at the Art Students League and the School of Visual Arts, and while still a student was invited by Andy Warhol to work for the magazine Interview. David LaChapelle has had solo exhibitions at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Kunst Haus Wien, the Fotografiska Museet Stockholm and elsewhere. His work has appeared in numerous group shows, for example at the Brooklyn Museum and the Helmut Newton Foundation.

Curator: Kristin Schrader

DAVID LACHAPELLE EARTH LAUGHS IN FLOWERS 

A catalogue in German and English was published in cooperation with DISTANZ-Verlag with  an introduction by Dr. Veit Görner and texts by Dr. Thomas Andratschke and Kristin Schrader. 38 Euros.

Kestnergesellschaft 

30159 Hanover 

Germany

www.kestner.org

Exhibition : Esmeralda Valencia Lindström 

Plans for the Morning 

Arcade Projects 

Arcade, London 

17 - 26 march 2011 

Esmeralda Valencia Lindström 

Plans for the Morning, 2011 

Clay, plastic, wood, paper, paint, video projection 

Photo Courtesy the artist and ARCADE, London 

"I have been thinking about how to name the show in a way that keeps a balance between the sense of activity that I feel is an important aspect of the work and a kind of hesitant optimism that I have become more aware of after thinking about the piece some more. Having plans for  the morning is to me an image of emotional safety; the opposite of waking up to empty time. It relates to the confort of moving objects and oneself around, or experiencing something in motion. I am interested in how making work can be this kind of organising but yet vague activity consisting of small shifts or adjustments. like opening and closing kitchen cupboards" Esmeralda Valencia Lindström.

ESMERALDA VALENCIA LINDSTROM

Esmeralda Valencia Lindström was born in 1983 in Sweden. She studied at Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, 2003-2007 and at Royal Academy Schools, London, 2008-2011.

Recent group shows include Red Mansion Art Prize, London, 2010, The Thought of Stuff, RBS, London, 2010, Public House, event at the Moot Gallery, Nottingham, 2010, Floating and Waterlogged Objects at Fold Gallery, London, 2011. 

She received the Red Mansion residency to Beijing in 2009. 

Esmeralda Valencia Lindström will graduate from the Royal Academy in June 2011.

ARCADE, LONDON 

www.arcadefinearts.com 

Renwick Craft Invitational 2011 Exhibition at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

History in the Making: 

Renwick Craft Invitational 2011 

Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Washington DC 

March 25 - July 31, 2011 

“History in the Making: Renwick Craft Invitational 2011” opens March 25 at the Renwick Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s branch museum for craft and decorative arts, and closes July 31. The exhibition features 70 works by ceramic artist CLIFF LEE, furniture maker MATTHIAS PLIESSNIG, glass artist JUDITH SCHAECHTER and silversmith UBALDO VITALI. Each artist is a master of his or her medium and creates artworks that combine historical techniques with contemporary forms.  

The artists were chosen by Nicholas R. Bell, curator at the museum’s Renwick Gallery; Ulysses Dietz, senior curator and curator of decorative arts at The Newark Museum; and Andrew Wagner, editor-in-chief of ReadyMade magazine. Bell is the curator of the exhibition. It is the fifth in the museum’s biennial series, intended to celebrate artists deserving of wider national recognition. 

“‘History in the Making’ captures the thrilling way crafts evoke the ‘remembrance of things past,’” said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “These four artists have the traditions of their media embedded deeply in their minds and hands, so their work feels at once profoundly rooted and entirely fresh.”

“Vitali, Lee, Schaechter and Pliessnig use varied histories of craftsmanship and creative expression as points of departure in the pursuit of original art,” said Nicholas R. Bell. “Drawing from diverse cultural histories and experiences, these artists explore the depth of the creative wellspring for contemporary craft in the United States. The objects in the exhibition reveal how the most dedicated and skilled individuals produce works of uncommon splendor.” 

UBALDO VITALI (b. 1944, works in Maplewood, NJ) is considered by some to be the greatest living silversmith in the United States. He is a fourth-generation silversmith, trained in the guild system of Rome, which ties him to the practices of previous generations. He also is a master conservator of antique silver and draws on his grasp of historical techniques to shape the contemporary pieces for which he is best known. His bravura works, such as “Tureen” (2001), combine undulating baroque forms and ornament with a distinctly modern spirit. 

UBALDO VITALI

Ubaldo Vitali 

Tureen, 2001 

silver, sodalite 

Courtesy of the artist

UBALDO VITALI

Ubaldo Vitali 

25th Anniversary Tea and Coffee Service, 2004 

(designed 1999) 

silver, glass [glass by Len DiNardo] 

Courtesy of Janet and Ricardo Zapata 

UBALDO VITALI

Ubaldo Vitali 

Singerie Candlestick, 1976 

silver 

Collection of the artist 

UBALDO VITALI

Ubaldo Vitali 

Triple Wave Pitcher, 1999 

silver, ebony 

Collection of the artist 

CLIFF LEE (b. 1951, works in Stevens, Pa.) was raised in Taiwan, surrounded by China’s rich ceramic past through porcelain collected by his parents and frequent visits to the National Palace Museum. Although trained as a neurosurgeon, his medical career was eventually overshadowed by his passion for clay. The knowledge and skills he developed as a doctor inform his work. Lee’s skilled hands mold and carve impeccable vessels in homemade porcelain. His technical knowledge and understanding of chemistry have proven invaluable in re-creating previously lost Chinese glazes, such as the imperial yellow glaze that took 17 years to replicate.  

CLIFF LEE

Cliff Lee, Teardrop (left), 2000 

porcelain, kuan glaze, india ink 

Courtesy of Marilyn and Irwin Scher 

Cliff Lee, Guan Ware Vase (right), 1994 

porcelain, kuan glaze 

Smithsonian American Art Museum 

Gift of Carol and Bill Wright in memory of Dr. Edward L. Katz 

CLIFF LEE

Cliff Lee, Teardrop

porcelain, oxblood glaze, 2001 

porcelain, chun blue glaze, 2004 

porcelain, imperial yellow glaze, 2001 

Courtesy of the artist

CLIFF LEE

Cliff Lee, Prickly Melon (short and tall), 2008 

Porcelain, imperial yellow glaze 

Courtesy of the artist 

JUDITH SCHAECHTER (b. 1961, works in Philadelphia) finds inspiration for her stained glass windows from disparate sources, including allegorical paintings, medieval tapestries, comic books, church windows, the American Civil War and punk rock. She almost single-handedly resurrected the art of stained glass in American studio craft by mastering the technical skills of a medium not previously used for personal narratives. Schaechter is known nationally and internationally as an innovator in the field.  

JUDITH SCHAECHTER

Judith Schaechter 

The Floor, 2006 

glass 

Courtesy of Claire Oliver 

JUDITH SCHAECHTER

Judith Schaechter 

John Fletcher Hamlin Is No More, 2003 

glass 

Courtesy of David Mittleman and Hugh Glats 

MATTHIAS PLIESSNIG (b. 1978, works in Philadelphia) uses traditional boat-building techniques to construct extraordinary furniture. His work blurs the lines between design, craft, sculpture and engineering. His organic forms are designed with 3-D modeling software and then assembled from steam-bent strips of white oak, melding ancient and futuristic technologies in the pursuit of comfort. A work in the exhibition, “Rivulet” (2009), has more than 7,000 points of contact, each joint locked with a tiny bamboo peg. Pliessnig has reinvigorated contemporary American furniture practice through his unexpected approach to design and dedication to craftsmanship.  

MATTHIAS PLIESSNIG

Matthias Pliessnig 

Amada, 2010 

white oak 

Courtesy of Arthur Dantchik 

MATTHIAS PLIESSNIG

Matthias Pliessnig 

Rivulet, 2009 

white oak, bamboo 

Courtesy of Arthur Dantchik

The EXHIBITION CATALOG, published by the museum and Scala Publishers Ltd., includes a foreword by Broun, essays by Bell, Dietz and Wagner, and biographies for each artist. The book is available in the museum’s store and online for $24.95 (softcover). 

The Ryna and Melvin Cohen Family Foundation Endowment provides generous support for “History in the Making: Renwick Craft Invitational 2011.” The Cohen Family’s generosity in creating this endowment makes possible this biennial series highlighting outstanding craft artists who are deserving of wider national recognition. 

The 2011 Renwick Craft Invitational is dedicated to the memory of Melvin S. Cohen, who died January 19, in recognition of his commitment to the arts, American craft and his community. 

Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum 

Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. 

Washington DC 

americanart.si.edu 

Henry Leutwyler Photographs of Michael Jackson’s items at Foley Gallery, NYC

Exhibition: Henry Leutwyler
Neverland Lost: A Portrait of Michael Jackson
Foley Gallery, New York
Through April 2, 2011

Neverland Lost: A Portrait of Michael Jackson, on view at Foley Gallery in New York, is an exhibition of color photographs by HENRY LEUTWYLER featuring the personal belongings of the late Michael Jackson.

As a portrait photographer, Leutwyler has always been interested in investigating the stories told by the artifacts that make up people’s lives. In 2009, Neverland Ranch was packed and crated in preparation for a public auction of Michael Jackson’s possessions. Leutwyler was sent to California to photograph the iconic studded white glove and spent three days sifting through more than a thousand items. In the end it took a second trip back to the warehouse in April 2009 to complete the entire story.

The photographs, many of which are staged on a simple black background, range from bejeweled costumes to a storage box lid filled with small Wizard of Oz figurines. It’s the simplicity of his artifacts that capture the life of the King of Pop the public never saw. As Leutwyler puts it: "It is said that the Pharaohs built tombs to reveal their lives to future generations. Michael Jackson sacrificed his childhood to the calling of his musical gift. Neverland was the pyramid he constructed to a lost childhood."

Swiss born, HENRY LEUTWYLER is an internationally acclaimed and award winning photographer. A creative force in Paris for a decade, he moved to New York City in 1996, where he lives with his wife and two children. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Vanity Fair and Esquire.

 

 

HENRY LEUTWYLER
NEVERLAND LOST:
A PORTRAIT OF MICHAEL JACKSON
Published by Steidl, 2010
Hardcover, 8 x 11 inches, 96 pages

FOLEY GALLERY
548 W 28th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10001

2011 Season at Foley Gallery

Brian Ormond, IIIII, January 11 - February 19, 2011
Henry Leutwyler, Neverland Lost:  A Portrait of Michael Jackson, Feb 24 - April 2, 2011
Hikari Shimoda, April 7 - May 7, 2011
Edward Mapplethorpe, May 12 - June 18, 2011

www.foleygallery.com

David Hilliard & David Rathman at Mark Moore Gallery, Culver City, California

David Hilliard & David Rathman 

Great Expectations 

Mark Moore Gallery, Culver City 

Through April 2, 2011 

DAVID RATHMAN

David Rathman, Wonderings, 2010

Watercolor on paper 

30 x 40 inches

© David Rathman - Courtesy Mark Moore Gallery 

GREAT EXPECTATIONS at Mark Moore Gallery in Culver City (the MM Gallery was previously located in Santa Monica), California, is a two-person exhibition featuring new works by DAVID HILLIARD and DAVID RATHMAN. This exhibition explores concepts of modern masculinity through two divergent mediums: photography and watercolor.

David Hilliard's distinctive command of a cinematic narrative is at once romantic and disconsolate, oftentimes crafting bittersweet vignettes that grapple with notions of sexuality, faith, mortality and nostalgia. His subtle manipulation of perspective and depth alludes to a similar distortion in our recollected memories, wistful snapshots drawn upon to form a chronicled identity unique to the artist yet relevant to all. Similarly, David Rathman's mottled watercolors illustrate iconic emblems of strength and struggle, luminary and the underdog. Loosely rendered scenes beckon to their pop cultural origins – films, album covers and advertisements alike – while also acting as collated excerpts from a lost Americana memoir. Mirage-like figures seem pulled from the hazy recesses of a sentimental male mind, or from the filmic cutting room floor as Rathman delineates composites of the modern idol. Together, Hilliard and Rathman produce a sagacious survey of the tradition of hero-worship, and foster insightful tension between conventional and unorthodox imagery of virility. With a tempered use of cliché and common expectation, Hilliard and Rathman's work yield frank complexities often overshadowed by mythic constructs of machismo.

DAVID HILLIARD (b. 1964) first showed with Mark Moore Gallery in 2000. Since then, he has had solo exhibitions in Boston, Seattle, New York, Frankfurt, Atlanta, Portland and New Orleans – and has been included in exhibitions at DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park (MA), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MA), Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts (OR) and Miami Art Museum (FL), among others. His work is also featured in over twenty collections of note, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (CA), Philadelphia Museum of Art (PA), the Community of Madrid (Spain) and the Art Institute of Chicago (IL). He is also represented by Carroll and Sons (Boston), Yancey Richardson Gallery (New York) and Jackson Fine Art (Atlanta). Hilliard received his MFA from Yale University, and lives and works in Boston (MA). 

DAVID RATHMAN (b.1958) was first included in Ultrasonic V: It's Only Natural at Mark Moore Gallery in 2010, and is newly represented by the gallery. He has had solo exhibitions New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Los Angeles, and has been included in exhibitions at the Walker Art Center (MN), Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center (NY) and Arts Center of St. Petersburg (FL). His work has been acquired by more than a dozen collections, including the Walker Art Center (MN), The New Museum of Contemporary Art (NY), The Art Institute of Chicago (IL), the J. Paul Getty Museum (CA) and Boston Public Library (MA). He is also represented by Larissa Goldston Gallery (NY). Rathman received his BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MN), and lives and works in Minneapolis.

MARK MOORE GALLERY

5790 Washington Blvd. 

CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA 90232

www.markmooregallery.com

Upcoming exhibitions at the Mark Moore Gallery:

Josh Azzarella, Works: 2004 - 2011, April 9 - May 14, 2011

Cindy Wright, New Work, May 21 - July 9, 2011

Mark Fox, New Work, May 21 - July 9, 2011

Cordy Ryman & Kiel Johnson, Construct, July 16 - August 27, 2011

Ultrasonic VI  Annual Group Exhibition, September 10 - October 22, 2011

Jeremy Fish & Kenichi Yokono, Rise of the Underground, October 29 - December 17, 2011 

Brian Ormond - Foley Gallery, NYC

Exhibition: Brian Ormond, IIIII
Foley Gallery, New York
January 11 - February 19, 2011

Inspired by the natural lines of the urban environment, BRIAN ORMOND creates networks of lines that might resemble delicate systems of order and balance.  Through spontaneous gestures, marks are made to create a movement and flow of energy  choreographing a dance of fine white lines.

Each painted panel is layered with oil, which is then meticulously removed by etching with soft and hard strokes, creating a variety of markings.  Sometimes scratched beyond recognition, Ormond tests the ability of the line to sustain and guide us through the painting.

Muted in their palette of dark and cool tones and energized by frenetic line work, Ormond's paintings both gently soothe in their color and create strong movement with their line.

BRIAN ORMOND studied at NY University, The National academy and the Art Students League.  He has previously had solo exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles. Ormond was born in Cork, Ireland and currently splits his time between there and New York City.

FOLEY GALLERY
www.foleygallery.com

Charles Biederman - Works: 1934-1994 – Exhibition at Meridith Ward Fine Art in NYC

Charles Biederman - Works: 1934-1994
Meridith Ward Fine Art, NYC
Through January 8, 2011

 
CHARLES BIEDERMAN – WORKS: 1934-1994 is on view at Meredith Ward Fine Art and feature twelve works, including constructions, paintings, sculpture, and works on paper from 1934 to 1994. The exhibition celebrates the publication of a new biography on the artist by Susan C. Larsen and Neil Juhl Larsen.

The show includes examples of Biederman’s structurist reliefs from all periods, including New York #8, a rare painted wood and glass construction from 1939; #2 Red Wing, a monumental wood, aluminum, and Plexiglas work from 1949; and #34 Aix, an aluminum construction from 1972. Also included will be a selection of paintings and works on paper from the few years in the mid-1930s when Biederman was focusing on two-dimensional media.

In September 1934, Charles Biederman moved to New York to be near the hub of developments in modern art. There, he observed firsthand the latest works of the European avant-garde, and made acquaintances with influential artists, dealers, and curators. By 1936, Biederman was working in an increasingly abstract mode, and was given his first solo exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery. 

Credited with inventing the medium of three-dimensional structurist reliefs, Charles Biederman was a pioneer in the development of abstraction in America. With their vibrant colors and unusual choice of materials, these constructions broke new ground in the development of an abstract vocabulary in the United States. Biederman considered the reliefs so successful, that by 1937, he put painting aside and worked exclusively in three dimensions from that point on.

Born in Cleveland, Charles Biederman began his career working in a commercial art studio, followed by formal instruction at the Art Institute of Chicago. His exposure to the work of modernist masters in the Art Institute’s collection stimulated his interest in cubism, and convinced him to take a progressive path in his work. As the young artist experimented in a range of styles, his works became increasingly ordered and geometric.

MEREDITH WARD FINE ART
44 East 74th Street - Suite 1
New York, NY 10021 USA

www.meredithwardfineart.com

Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
November 10, 2010 - April 10, 2011

Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand, three masters of photography, will be featured at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from November 10, 2010, through April 10, 2011, in the exhibition Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand.

The diverse and groundbreaking work of these artists will be revealed through a presentation of more than 100 photographs, drawn entirely from the Museum's collection. On view will be several of the Metropolitan's greatest photographic treasures from the 1900s to 1920s, including Stieglitz's famous portraits of Georgia O'Keeffe, Steichen's large colored photographs of the Flatiron building, and Strand's pioneering abstractions.

ALFRED STIEGLITZ (1864–1946) was a photographer of supreme accomplishment as well as a passionate advocate for photography and modern art through his gallery "291" and his sumptuous journal Camera Work. Stieglitz also laid the foundation for the Museum's collection of photographs. In 1928, he donated 22 of his own works to the Metropolitan; these were the first photographs to enter the Museum's collection as works of art. In later decades he gave the Museum more than 600 photographs by his contemporaries, including Edward Steichen and Paul Strand.

Among Stieglitz's works to be featured in this exhibition are portraits, views of New York City from the beginning and end of his career, and the 1920s cloud studies he titled Equivalents, through which he meant to demonstrate how "to hold a moment, how to record something so completely, that all who see [the picture of it] will relive an equivalent of what has been expressed."

The exhibition will also include numerous photographs from Stieglitz's extraordinary composite portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986), part of a group of works selected for the Museum's collection by O'Keeffe herself. Stieglitz made more than 300 images of O'Keeffe between 1917 and 1937—some of them candid shots, some focusing on her face, hands, or feet alone, and many of them showing her nude. Through these photographs Stieglitz revealed O'Keeffe's strengths and vulnerabilities, and almost single-handedly defined her public persona for generations to come.

Stieglitz's protégé and gallery collaborator, EDWARD STEICHEN (1879–1973), was the most talented exemplar of the Photo-Secession, the group founded by Stieglitz in 1902, seceding, in his words, "from the accepted idea of what constitutes a photograph," but also from the camera clubs and other institutions dominated by a more retrograde establishment. In works such as The Pond—Moonrise (1904), made using a painstaking technique of multiple printing, Steichen rivaled the scale, color, and individuality of painting.

Steichen's three large variant prints of The Flatiron (1904) are prime examples of the conscious effort of Photo-Secession photographers to assert the artistic potential of their medium. Steichen achieved coloristic effects reminiscent of Whistler's Nocturne paintings by brushing layers of pigment suspended in light-sensitive gum solution onto a platinum photograph. Although he used only one negative to create all three photographs, the variable coloring enabled him to create three significantly different images that convey the chromatic progression of twilight. The Metropolitan's three prints, all donated by Stieglitz in 1933, are the only known exhibition prints of Steichen's iconic image.

In 1908 Steichen photographed the plaster of Rodin's sculpture of Honoré de Balzac in the open air, by the light of the moon, making several exposures as long as an hour each. In Balzac, The Silhouette—4 A.M., the moonlight has transformed the plaster into a monumental phantom rising above the brooding nocturnal landscape. Steichen recalled that when he presented his finished prints to Rodin, the elated sculptor exclaimed, "You will make the world understand my Balzac through your pictures."

Stieglitz's and Steichen's younger contemporary, PAUL STRAND (1890-1976), pioneered a shift from the soft-focus aesthetic and painterly prints of the Photo-Secession to the straight approach and graphic power of an emerging modernism. Strand was introduced to Stieglitz by his teacher, Lewis Hine, the social reformer and photographer, and quickly became part of the coterie of artists that gathered at "291," where he was exposed to the latest trends in European art through groundbreaking exhibitions of works by Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, and Brancusi.

Strand incorporated the new language of geometric abstraction into his interest in photographing street life and machine culture. His photographs from 1915-1917 treated three principal themes: movement in the city, abstractions, and street portraits. The final double issue of Stieglitz's Camera Work (1917) was devoted to this young photographer's work, marking a pivotal moment in the course of photography.

In From the El (1915), Strand juxtaposed the ironwork and shadows of the elevated train with the tiny form of a lone pedestrian. In 1916, he experimented with radical camera angles and photographing at close range. Strand's Abstraction, Twin Lakes, Connecticut is among the first photographic abstractions to be made intentionally. When Stieglitz published a variant of this image in Camera Work, he praised Strand's results as "the direct expression of today."

In the same year, Strand made a series of candid street portraits with a hand-held camera fitted with a special lens that allowed him to point the camera in one direction while taking the photograph at a 90-degree angle. Blind, his seminal image of a street beggar, was published in Camera Work and immediately became an icon of the new American photography, which integrated the objectivity of social documentation with the boldly simplified forms of Modernism. As is true for most of the large platinum prints by Strand in the exhibition, the Metropolitan's Blind, a gift of Stieglitz, is the only exhibition print of this image from the period.

Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand is organized by Malcolm Daniel, Curator in Charge of the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Photographs.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication, Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand: Masterworks from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The 160-page volume, by Malcolm Daniel, will feature 125 illustrations, including reproductions of many of the crown jewels from the Museum's collection of photographs. It is published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press ($35).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028

www.metmuseum.org

Related Posts in this blog

The Metropolitan Museum's Department of Photographs [Wanafoto, October 2010]

"Our Future Is In The Air": Photographs from the 1910s, also on view at the Met from November 9, 2010 through April 10, 2011 [Wanafoto, October 2010]

Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction at the Whitney Museum of American Art – This exhibition featured famous photographs of Georgia O’Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz.[Wanafoto, December 2009]

This post has been updated in October 2010.