International Art News

From September 19 2012 to January 6, 2013 – Musee du Luxembourg
On 29 January 1906, a group of art collectors and artists formed the Modern Art Club (Cercle de l’Art moderne) in Le Havre. Among the members were Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and Emile Othon Friesz and some of the town’s biggest collectors at the beginning of the 20th century: Olivier Senn, Charles-Auguste Marande, Pieter van der Velde, Georges Dussueil, Oscar Schmitz, Edouard Lüthy…They set themselves the objective of promoting modern art in Le Havre.

Between 1906 and 1910, the group organised exhibitions, lecture series, poetry readings and concerts. Frantz Jourdain, Guillaume Apollinaire and Claude Debussy supported the club, which was linked from the outset to the newly established Salon d’Automne.
On its initiative, works by the great artists of the time were shown in Le Havre, especially at four annual exhibitions: the “old” Impressionists such as Monet and Renoir, and the Neo-Impressionists, but above all the young Fauves, brought by their friends Braque, Dufy, and Friesz. Le Havre, which was not too far from Paris, gave the Fauves a warm welcome and a potential outlet for their recent production, the very works that had sparked the scandal of the “wild beasts’ cage.”

Who were these men? What did they have in common? What was it about the historical, economic and cultural context of Le Havre that favoured the emergence of the club?

Le Havre was an industrial town, founded relatively recently (1517); by the mid 19th century, its flourishing port had become a major gateway for imports of exotic products. Local businessmen and notables were keen to give the city a “soul”. Consequently, a museum was established near the waterfront in 1845 and well-known artists were invited to regular exhibitions organised by the Art Friends Club (in 1868 Manet won a prize for his Dead Bullfighter, which had been refused five years before at the Salon de Paris). The merchants interested in these activities took an active part in the cultural life of the town and the success of their businesses had a direct influence on the fate of the artists, hence Eugène Boudin’s pithy comment: “No cotton, no paintings”.

In the late 19th century, a new generations of collectors appeared. They were all members of the Art Friends Club (Société des Amis des Arts), but had a particular interest in the work of young artists and often went to Paris to see the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Indépendants, the galleries run by Druet, Bernheim and Vollard, artists’ studios and auction rooms. They joined Dufy, Friesz and Braque in this singular adventure.
The collections of two of them, Olivier Senn and Charles-Auguste Marande, are now in the Musée d’Art moderne André Malraux in Le Havre, donated by the artists themselves or by their descendants. The collections of van der Velde, Dussueil, Schmitz, Lüthy and others, although scattered, are well known.

Each one tells us something of the collector’s personality. Although there are some similarities due to shared tastes (for Boudin, Pissarro, Marquet…), the collections reveal individual quirks and daring choices. For instance, Senn started his collection with two major works by Delacroix and Courbet from the 1850s and went on to collect Impressionist and Post-Impressionist pieces, while Dussueil and van der Velde were immediately attracted by the very latest work, buying Matisses at the same time as the Steins, and before the Morozovs and Shchukin. Degas and Cross are well represented in the Senn collection, while Van Dongen was preferred by van der Velde or Dussueil. There was obviously complicity and emulation between them and paintings circulated and sometimes changed hands.

The exhibition presents some 90 works and takes visitors into the collectors’ world. Going beyond their private interests, they joined the club to defend a conception of their commitment to modern art and artists, and to the public interest. The show also looks at the personal careers of the artists linked to the club, at first united in the defence of Fauvism and then gradually going their separate ways. The Cercle de l’Art moderne can be seen as a unique and short-lived provincial phenomenon, an instant of grace due to a handful of people convinced of the need to defend modernity. Its avant-garde image stuck to the town and region in which it developed.

Musee du Luxembourg

From 29 September 2012 to 25 April 2013
During its temporary stay in the Hermitage Amsterdam, the Van Gogh Museum will present works by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) from its permanent collection in a completely new way. In this display of some 75 paintings, selected letters, objects and works on paper, visitors will follow Vincent van Gogh on a personal quest into the heart of his artistic identity. The themes that the artist himself identified as central to his development will form the basis of the presentation Vincent: The Van Gogh Museum in the Hermitage Amsterdam.

During this seven-month renovation, most of the works by Van Gogh in the museum’s collection will be on display at the Hermitage Amsterdam. Many major paintings will be included, such as Sunflowers, The bedroom, Almond blossom, The potato eaters and The yellow house, in surprising combinations of early and late works. Van Gogh’s most famous and best loved paintings will be shown side by side with lesser known works in closely integrated thematic pairings.

Hermitage Amsterdam

Until the 13th of January 2013 -  Hermitage Amsterdam
The Hermitage Amsterdam present Impressionism: Sensation & Inspiration: the world-famous Impressionist paintings from the vast collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, are presented in their artistic context.

Masterpieces by pioneers like Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Camille Pissarro are accompanied by the work of other influential French painters from the second half of the nineteenth century, such as Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Léon Gérôme. The exhibition focus on contrasts between artistic movements. For instance, visitors can see and experience the sensational quality of Impressionism, the movement that heralded a new age.

All the paintings, drawings, and sculptures come from the collection of the St. Petersburg Hermitage. Seldom has such a rich survey of this period been on display in the Netherlands.

 Hermitage Amsterdam

From September 14 to November 19, 2012 – Malba – Fundación Costantini – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires
Beatriz Milhazes (Brazilian, b.1960) is a painter, printmaker, and collage artist associated with the Pattern and Decoration movement, and best known for her colorful, ornamental surfaces inspired by Brazilian cultural imagery. Born in Rio de Janeiro, she studied social communication at the Faculdades Integradas Hélio Alonso, and the Escola de Artes Visuais. Since 1987, she has worked in a studio in Rio de Janeiro near the city’s botanical gardens, which have inspired the leaf-like patterns in her work. Other influences include the work of landscape architect Roberto Burle, and Modernist painters Tarsila do Amaral (Brazilian, 1896–1973) and Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944). Milhazes saturates the surfaces of her work with baroque patterns that incorporate everyday materials, such as Cacao (2004), which layers floral shapes with chocolate bar wrappers. In 2005, Milhazes completed a commission for the Gloucester Road Tube station, titled Peace and Love, which fills 19 vaulted arches with her signature colorful patterns. She has held solo exhibitions at museums, such as the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Fondation Cartier in Paris.

Her work is included in several museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. She lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.

Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires

From September 18 to December 31, 2012 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art
For decades, critics have observed that Andy Warhol exerted an enormous impact on contemporary art, but no exhibition has yet explored the full nature or extent of that influence.

Through approximately forty-five works by Warhol alongside one hundred works by some sixty other artists, Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years juxtaposes prime examples of Warhol’s paintings, sculpture, and films with those by other artists who in key ways reinterpret, respond, or react to his groundbreaking work. What emerges is a fascinating dialogue between works of art and artists across generations.

The exhibition is structured in five thematic sections: “Daily News: From Banality to Disaster,” “Portraiture: Celebrity and Power,” “Queer Studies: Shifting Identities,” “Consuming Images: Appropriation, Abstraction, and Seriality,” and “No Boundaries: Business, Collaboration, and Spectacle.”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

From 22 September 2012 to 30 December 2012 – Dallas Contemporary
For over two decades, the meticulous and audacious imagery created by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin has challenged and inspired the field of fashion photography. In celebrating more than 25 years in the industry, the Dutch couple has created an exhibition comprised of more than 300 works. Pretty Much Everything will take over two of Dallas Contemporary’s largest galleries and will open on Saturday 22 September 2012.

They are regular contributors to Vogue Paris, Purple Magazine, W Magazine and V Magazine among many others and have created iconic advertising campaigns for leading fashion and fragrance brands including: Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, Gucci, Chloe, Givenchy, Balenciaga, Chanel, Robeto Cavalli and Viktor & Rolf Parfum.

van Lamsweerde and Matadin’s career in art is equally prolific; their work is exhibited internationally and held in public and private collections across the world. Motifs from imagery produced for commercial commissions are often carried through into their artwork and the pair regard this dialogue between commerce and art a central theme of their practice.

Dallas Contemporary