International Art News

Doğançay - No Future, 1999 - Mixed media on masonite tiles mounted on canvas - 122 x 122 cm.Doğançay Collection of the artist

Until the 23rd of September 2012 – Istambul Modern
Since the early 1960s, Burhan Doğançay examines the social, cultural and political transformation of modern and contemporary urban culture through the use of walls. As an urban traveller, he has been tracking walls in various cities across the world for almost half a century. With the guise of an anthropologist, Doğançay examines these surfaces that are open to all manners of contemporary interventions ranging from posters to slogans, and messages with sexual content to newspaper clippings. Doğançay’s works with different techniques and styles, are positioned in both a historical and contemporary ground through their incorporation of the icons of popular culture and political symbols.

Fifty Years of Urban Walls: A Burhan Doğançay Retrospective stands as an anthology for Doğançay’s last 50 years of work. With works that range from small sized pieces to big canvases, and installations that run beyond the walls, to various materials and pursuits, this exhibition unrolls the background to Doğançay’s ways of working. The exhibition gathers together 14 distinct series and periods of time with works coming from different collections all over the world. The accompanying catalogue presents images of works along with explanatory texts, which provide different perspectives to his ouevre while documents and photographs on Doğançay’s life alludes to his urban traveller identity.

Doğançay - Hear It With Your Heart, 1988 - Collage and acrylic on two stacked canvases - 122 x 127 cm. Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection

Munich based publishing house Prestel will be printing and distributing the catalogue worldwide,  allowing Dogançay’s works to access a broader viewing public. The curator of the exhibition, Levent Çalıkoğlu maps out the artist’s body of work spanning over 50 years in his essay entitled, The Recording of History and the Anatomy of Walls. Brand new essays by Brandon Taylor, Professor Ermeritus of History of Art at Southampton University, and Richard Vine, Senior Editor at Art in America, as well as explanatory texts on each series by the writer, editor and graphic designer Clive Giboire all examine the techniques Dogançay has developed and integrated into his practice.

Istanbul Modern

Steve Diet Goedde - Midori, San Francisco, 1996<br />13” x 19” Ultrachromium Ink Print - Series of 10

From July 5 to August 26,2012 – Sin City Gallery
Recent erotic photographic explorations by World-renowned photographer Steve Diet Goedde, that expand his traditional means of taking images.

In addition to his trademark black and white medium-format work, Goedde finds inspiration from a variety of low-fi equipment as point-and-shoot cameras and the iPhone. Many of his new images, which have never been made public before this exhibition, are of Goedde’s muse and girlfriend Yee and possess a very candid and personal feel.

Steve Diet Goedde - Gina Velour, Chicago, 1996 - 13” x 19” Ultrachromium Ink Print - Series of 10

Goedde has been taking erotic photographs since 1990. His recognizable work has adorned magazines and gallery walls worldwide. His models include such icons as Dita Von Teese, Masuimi Max, Aria Giovanni, Justine Joli, and Emily Marilyn.

Goedde was born and raised in St. Louis, Mo., and learned the basics of darkroom work and photography from his father, who was an amateur photographer. By the age of 13, Goedde was obsessed with taking photographs and started educating himself about photographers who inspired him, most notably Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman and Diane Arbus.

Steve Diet Goedde - Gina Velour, Super 8, 1997 - 13” x 19” Ultrachromium Ink Print - Series of 10

He moved to Chicago in 1985 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he studied filmmaking and painting. He refused to study photography stating that he had already acquired his aesthetic and visual style. His work was compiled in two hardcover monographs, “The Beauty of Fetish: Volumes I & II,” by renowned photography publisher Edition Stemmle in 1998 and 2001 respectively. A career retrospective was released by Slish Pix on DVD in 2005 entitled “Living Through Steve Diet Goedde” and featured animated photo galleries, interviews, commentary, and behind-the-scenes footage.

A fusion of music and photography happened in 2009 when Goedde collaborated with French composer Robert Waechter on a CD released by ReadyMade Music in France entitled “GoeddeConcerto” in which the concert master of the Philharmonic of Nice, France, interpreted 21 of  Goedde’s photographs into 21 mini-concertos.

Goedde currently lives in Los Angeles.

Sin City Gallery

Ugo Rondinone, nude, 2011 © the artist. Courtesy of Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich photo ©: Stefan Altenburger Photography, Zürich

Until September 19th 2012 – Nicholas P. Goulandris Foundation – Museum of Cycladic Art
The Museum of Cycladic Art is pleased to announce an exhibition by the Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone, under the title nude. The exhibition is a new site specific installation. Rondinone intervened and changed everything about the space, the floor, the light and the colours of the walls and ceiling to create his characteristically otherworld, dreamlike environment.  A special sculpture wall was installed in the first room to make sure this world is separated from everyday life. Neon lights and a lightbox sculpture create an even light that confuses our sense of time or place. Seven life-sized nude figures inhabit the space, in peaceful repose, informally posed on the floor. Jointed like store-window mannequins, the figures are exquisitely detailed, as they are cast in wax directly from the human body. The sections of each figure are made of different earth colors, a mixture of wax and earth pigments. Naked and vulnerable, they seem to be resting after having performed. Rondinone himself says he chose dancers at the peak of their youth, bodies full of energy to accentuate the contradiction with their state of slumber. Why are they resting? From what? Maybe from life? Did they ever have their own life? In the context of the Museum of Cycladic Art, where the figurines of the permanent collection, dating from 3000BC, remain hermetically closed, resting in enigmatic serenity, Rondinone’s resting figures invite the viewer to reflect on the evolution of the figuration through the centuries but also on how humanity deals with existential question through time.

Museum of Cycladic Art

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) Misia at the piano1902 - Oil on canvas - H. 46,2 ; L. 39 cm - San Francisco, Collection of Ann & Gordon Getty© ADAGP, Paris 2012

Until September 9th 2012 – Musee d’Orsay
Misia Godebska (1872-1950) was a legendary figure of the French art scene from the Belle Époque to the Roaring Twenties. At first she became known for her talent as a pianist. Her marriage in 1893 to Thadée Natanson, the editor of the journal La Revue blanche, propelled her to the centre of a group of creative artists who were champions of Symbolism and the decorative arts.

Félix Vallotton Misia at Her Dressing Table© RMN (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski

At the height of her influence, she became one of the most sought-after portrait models of her time, sitting for Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton, Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir. She was a friend of Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Stravinsky, Cocteau and Chanel, and financed the Ballets Russes for over ten years.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) Poster for La Revue Blanche 1895 Colour lithograph, brushwork, pencil and crachis - H. 128 ; W. 92 cm - Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France© Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris

This multidisciplinary exhibition brings together portraits of Misia and her entourage, works, documents and accounts by contemporary artists that illustrate the prolific creative activity at the time Misia was the Queen of Paris.

Musee d’Orsay

Vladimir Tatlin, Marin (autoportrait), 1911 Musée Russe, Saint Petersburg © photo: 2012, Musée Russe, Saint Petersburg

Until the 14th of October 2012 – Museum Tinguely
This year the Museum Tinguely in Basel is dedicating its large summer exhibition to one of the most important figures of the Russian avant-garde: Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953). It is now almost twenty years since the last comprehen-sive retrospective to be devoted to this radically innovative artist. The presented works will include early paintings, counter-reliefs that reach out into the surrounding space, reconstructions of his revolutionary tower, and the flying machine Letatlin. The exhibition is rounded off with examples of his work for the theatre. The œuvre of this outstanding artist from the watershed period at the beginning of the twentieth century will be represented in over one hundred masterpieces, mostly on loan from major collections in Moscow and St Petersburg.

Streltsy, costume design, 1913

Vladimir Tatlin began his career as a seaman. Until 1913 his artistic activities were limited exclusively to painting and drawing. Interested in the traditional fields of icon-painting and folk art, he later transferred his attention to the most modern avant-garde trends in Russia and Western Europe, more precisely Paris. His entire later work is founded on painting. The exhibition will show a comprehensive selection of his early paintings with their bold expanses of colour, rhythmic curves, and striking use of dark and light outlines. In these eye-catching works Tatlin achieved a highly original synthesis of the Russian tradition and the French avant-garde.

Museum Tinguely

Edward Hopper (Nyack, 1882 - New York, 1967). Hotel Room. 1931 - Oil on canvas - 152.4 x 165.7 cm. Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid.

Until the 16th of September 2012 – Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
The exhibition Hopper is the result of a collaborative project between the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Réunion des Musées Nationaux de France. These are two particularly important institutions with regard to Edward Hopper, given that Paris and early 20th-century works of art were key reference points for the artist, while the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid houses the most important collection of his work outside the USA.

Edward Hopper, Morning Sun, 1952, huile sur toile, 71,4 x 101,9 cm, Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Howald Fund Purchase (exposition au musée Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)

Despite their enormous popularity and apparent accessibility, Hopper’s paintings are among the most complex phenomena within 20th-century art in the opinion of the exhibition’s two curators, Tomàs Llorens (Honorary Director of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza) and Didier Ottinger (Associate Director of the MNAM/Centre Pompidou). In order to demonstrate this point the exhibition will be organised into two parts: a first half that covers the artist’s formative years from approximately 1900 to 1924, represented through a comprehensive selection of sketches, paintings, drawings, illustrations, prints and watercolours that will be complemented by works of artists as Winslow Homer, Robert Henri, John Sloan, Edgar Degas or Walter Sickert; a second half will cover the years 1925 onwards, that focuses on Hopper’s mature output and aims to illustrate his career in the most complete and wide-ranging manner possible. In order to do so, this section combines thematic groupings (recurring motifs and subjects in Hopper’s works) with an overall chronological ordering.

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza