2009-03-26

U.S.A. - San Antonio-Texas - Imagenes de Mexico


Imágenes de México features images by eight photographers from our permanent collection who have captured their own visions of Mexico. Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958), Manuel Alvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1902-2002), Tina Modotti (American, 1901-1942), and Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976) are from the first half of twentieth century and were among the earliest practitioners of Modernism in Mexican photography. Flor Garduño (Mexican, b. 1957), a protégé of Alvarez Bravo, employs her superb modernist eye in one of her present contemporary photographs (Los Lemones, 1998). George O. Jackson (American, b. 1941), and Geoff Winningham (American, b. 1943) have both worked for many years in rural Mexico adding to the rich visual ethnographic record rooted in the nineteenth century photography of Lumholz, Starr, and others. Finally, Rojelio Reyes Rodriguez (American, b. 1971) is the youngest of the photographers shown here. This promising new practitioner of the craft is energetically searching for his own aesthetic eye.

San Antonio Museum of Art 27.02.2009-31.08.2009

2009-03-19

U.S.A. - Philadelphia-Pennsylvania - Henri Matisse and Modern Art on the French Riviera

Henri Matisse 1869-1954 - Open Window 1905

The winding stretch of Mediterranean coastline extending from Marseilles to Menton—known as the French Riviera—has inspired numerous artists since becoming a tourist resort in the 1860s. Henri Matisse (1869–1954) moved there in 1917, attracted by the area’s scenic beauty and radiant light. Matisse settled in Nice, the center of artistic and intellectual life in the south of France, until the end of his life. What is referred to as his “Nice period” consists primarily of the works he completed in the 1920s, when he painted richly decorated hotel interiors, suffused with light and inhabited by languorous odalisques.
The dazzling optical effects of the sun-drenched coastline encouraged other artists—such as Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), Raoul Dufy (1877–1953), and Chaim Soutine (1894–1943)—to move there in search of light and color. Including 40 paintings and sculptures from the Museum’s collection and local private collections, this installation celebrates the French Riviera’s mythic allure for modern artists.

2009-03-12

U.S.A. - Detroit-Michigan - The Role of Drawing in the Eighteenth Century

Rosalba Carriera's richly colored pastel portrait Of Caterina Sagredo Barbarigo

The eighteenth century, characterized by social and political unrest culminating in the French Revolution (1789–99), was also marked by artistic innovations. Artists and collectors traveled throughout Europe in great numbers, creating and purchasing works of art, many of them drawings. The art of drawing was more than an aesthetic exercise; it also became a way of obtaining and conveying knowledge and of ordering and understanding a quickly changing world.
The approximately 100 drawings in this show, all from the permanent collection, trace the changes in styles and techniques throughout the century.One of the most remarkable changes was the sheer number of professional and amateur artists interacting with the market on all levels. Not only didthese two groups create and collect drawings in large numbers, their activity increased demand for a wide variety of art materials—papers, chalks, inks, watercolors, and pastels—that enabled their pursuits.
The exhibition is arranged thematically to illuminate the goals of artists and collectors and their expectations of different genres. Among the most highly regarded categories were history subjects, portraiture, and landscape. History subjects, stories from mythological, religious, or historical sources, were most often represented in large-scale paintings, but drawing was the first step in making sense of complicated compositions and grandiose themes. The network of lines that covers Francois Boucher’s study for The Magnanimity of Scipio shows how artists used drawing to think on paper .
Landscapes that depicted country idylls or famous landmarks were sought after by collectors, although many examples were not exact representations of a specific scene. Rather, they encouraged voyages of the imagination. For example, Claude Joseph Vernet’s view of the Ruins of the Temple of Serapis at Pozzouli captures the wonder travelers experienced when visiting ancient sites in Italy.
Portraiture speaks to a widespread fascination with character and personal history through complex stories about sitters, relating social class, politicalaffiliation, and personality. Rosalba Carriera’s richly colored pastel portrait of Caterina Sagredo Barbarigo, shown for the first time in this exhibition, was designed to hold its own against oil paintings. Carriera and Barbarigo were both famed personalities, Barbarigo for her beauty and wit and Carriera for her considerable skill in working with pastel.

The Detroit Institute of Arts 18.02.2009 - 15.06.2009

Website : The Detroit Institute of Arts

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2009-03-05

U.S.A. - Los Angeles-California - Art of Two Germanys-Cold War Cultures


Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures

For East and West Germany during the Cold War, the creation of art and its reception and theorization were closely linked to their respective political systems: the Western liberal democracy of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the Eastern communist dictatorship of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Reacting against the legacy of Nazism, both Germanys revived pre-World War II national artistic traditions. Yet they developed distinctive versions of modern and postmodern art—at times in accord with their political cultures, at other times in opposition to them. By tracing the political, cultural, and theoretical discourses during the Cold War in the East and West German art worlds, Art of Two Germanys reveals the complex and richly varied roles that conventional art, new media, new art forms, popular culture, and contemporary art exhibitions played in the establishment of their art in the postwar era.
Art of Two Germanys is the first special exhibition to go on view inLACMA’s new Renzo Piano designed-building, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM). Divided into four chronological sections, the exhibition includes approximately 300 paintings, sculptures, photographs, multiples, videos, installations, and books, by 120 artists. The show features large-scale installations and recreations of major works by Hans Haacke, Heinz Mack, Sigmar Polke, Raffael Rheinsberg, Gerhard Richter, and Dieter Roth,as well as a number of videos and performance-based works. After LACMA, the exhibition will travel to Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg (May 23–September 6, 2009), and Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (October 3, 2009–January 10, 2010).
Curated by Stephanie Barron, Senior Curator of Modern Art, LACMA, and co-curator Dr. Eckhart Gillen, Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH.
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in cooperation with Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH. It was made possible in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany. Additional support was provided by LACMA's Art Museum Council. The international tour has been funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie



Website : City of Los Angeles