International Art News

Edvard Munch - Girls on the Bridge - 1901 (1902–27.) - oil on canvas 136 X 125.5 cm - National Gallery, Oslo

Until the 14th of October 2012 – Tate Modern
Few other modern artists are better known and yet less understood than Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944). This exhibition examines the artist’s work from the 20th century, including sixty paintings, many from the Munch Museum in Oslo, with a rare showing of his work in film and photography.

Munch is often seen as a 19th-century Symbolist painter but this exhibition shows how he engaged with modernity and was inspired by the everyday life outside of his studio such as street scenes and incidents reported in the media – including The House is Burning 1925–7, a sensational view of a real life event with people fleeing the scene of a burning building.

The show also examines how Munch often repeated a single motif over a long period of time in order to re-work it, as can be seen in the different versions of his most celebrated works, such as The Sick Child 1885–1927 and Girls on the Bridge 1902–27.

Edvard Munch, The Sick Child 1907 © Munch Museum/Munch-EllingsendGroup/DACS 2002

Munch’s use of prominent foregrounds and strong diagonals reference the technological developments in cinema and photography at the time. Creating the illusion of figures moving towards the spectator, this visual trick can be seen in many of Munch’s most innovative works such as Workers on their Way Home 1913–14. He was also keenly aware of the visual effects brought on by the introduction of electric lighting on theatre stages and used this to create striking effect in works such as The Artist and his Model 1919–21.

Like other painters such as Bonnard and Vuillard, Munch adopted photography in the early years of the 20th century and largely focused on self-portraits, which he obsessively repeated. In the 1930s he developed an eye disease and made poignant works which charted the effects of his degenerating sight.

Tate Modern

Anthony McCall, Line Describing a Cone 1973 © Anthony McCall, courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York - Sunday 22 July A rare poportunity to see all four 1974 cone films by Anthony McCal

The Tanks: Art in Action  – A fifteen-week festival from 18 July – 28 October 2012 – Tate Modern
What already impressed everyone about the Tate Modern when it was inaugurated was its huge size. His former electric plant has been able to offer contemporary art absolutely spectacular spaces that have ensured the public’s passion as we can see in the installations presented in the hall of the Turbines over the last ten years. While waiting for the extension carried out by Herzog and de Meuron to be concluded by 2016 (which will add 21,000 square metres i.e. 60% additional space), the museum has decided to recuperate other areas: the reservoirs where the oil used to run the plant was installed. These underground rooms with vast dimensions (30 metres long, 7 metres tall) will be inaugurated on 18 July 2012, with an original theme: they will host one of the largest concentrations in Europe of living art, happenings and performances. The list of artists includes Korean Sung Hwan Kim as well as Cuban artist Tania Bruguera or Flemish Anne Teresa de Keersmaecker.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker - Photo: Herman Sorgeloos - Thursday 19 – Friday 20 July One of the most important choreographers of the 20th century performs widely acclaimed Fase: Four movements to the music of Steve Reich

An excellent opening to the Cultural Olympiad and to the London Festival 2012.

Tate Modern

From May 19 to September 16, 2012 – Tampa Museum of Art
A Hundred Years – A Hundred Chairs. Masterworks from the Vitra Design Museum provides an opportunity to contemplate the fascinating history of chair design. Assembled from the expansive holdings of one of the world’s foremost design museums, this exhibition allows us to consider the aesthetic, technological and manufacturing concerns expressed through the design of the most ubiquitous of objects, the chair.

The exhibition begins in the last decades of the 19th century with curved wooden furniture that lent itself to mass-production. It was the introduction of the mass- produced object that changed the course of subsequent design. At the outset of the 20th century, design played a significant role in cultural development. Gerrit Rietveld designed furniture with simple lines, while Marcel Breuer created the first tubular steel chairs. This lightness in shape was subsequently a source of inspiration for Alvar Aalto, who was the first to use plywood, and for Jean Prouvé, who started to use techniques and materials that had previously only been used by the aeronautical industry.

Following the Second World War, design became a key element of daily life. American designers began to collaborate closely with industry. Designers like Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen and Harry Bertoia came up with designs that would be used for the mass production of furniture for American homes while in Europe, furniture design was developing mainly in Italy and Scandinavia. At the same time, the many designers wanted to make designer goods more accessible to the general public. Hans Wegner and Arne Jacobsen were forerunners in Scandinavian countries in creating wooden furniture, while the Italians turned their attention to more novel materials like plastic.

The considerable malleability of these materials, together with the development of new types of foam, gave rise to a wealth of creative fantasy in the sixties. At that time, Pop Art provided a source of inspiration and designers played on form and colour. The main representatives of this trend were Verner Panton and Joe Colombo. Later, in the seventies, designs became even more radical, leading to the emergence of opposition to the rules of Modernism. Groups of designers such as Memphis or Archizoom emphasized the amusing and playful nature of forms rather than functionality.

More recently, the eighties were marked by a search for individualism and pluralism, and the result was the emergence of a variety of remarkably novel approaches. Philippe Starck, Ron Arad and Gaetano Pesce are leading representatives of this trend. A search for simple but innovative shapes and materials found in the work of Frank Gehry and Jasper Morrison characterized the nineties. And finally, fantasy remains an indispensable criterion in the conception of forms as witnessed in the work of Ron Arad and Marc Newson.

Reproductions of drawings, sketches and documents belonging to the Vitra Design Museum accompany the chairs on display, and seven films reveal the manufacturing process of some of the chairs, giving the spectator general insight into different production techniques.

Tampa Museum of Art

Amedeo Modigliani - Elvire au col blanc (Elvire à la collerette)- 1917 ou 1918 - Oil on canvas, 92 x 65 cm. - Private Collection © Photo : Pinacothèque de Paris

Until the 9th of September 2012 – Pinacothèque de Paris
Jonas Netter, is one of the most influential collectors of the 20th century, a discoverer of talents, all the more inspired and brilliant, in that he was totally discreet throughout his life, to such an extent that he is even today still completely unknown by the general public.
However, without him, Modigliani would probably not have existed, nor Soutine, nor Utrillo. This exhibition will now pay him the homage he deserves by nally enabling the public to discover an ensemble of works of astounding beauty, chiefly by Modigliani.

Maurice Utrillo - Place de l’église à Montmagny-c. 1907 - Oil on canvas, 54 x 81 cm. - Private Collection - © Adagp, Paris 2012- © Jean Fabris, 2012- © Photo : Pinacothèque de Paris / Fabrice Gousset

Jonas Netter was Alsatian, an agent for various trademarks settled in Paris, and he was fascinated by art and painting. He discovers a painting by Modigliani and decides to buy it. He was one of the very first to acquire works by that artist, taking over from Paul Alexandre, who had supported him until then, before World War One. A collector in his very soul, Netter started off buying all the works by Modigliani that he saw at Zborowski’s. He became passionate about that artist of whom he managed to acquire about forty paintings at the end of the Twenties.

Then he noticed Soutine. Long before Barnes, he was fascinated by him. He, the middleclass and discreet Alsatian Jew, was overtaken by a limitless passion for all those artists who made up the Paris School. He also discovered Utrillo : his white period delighted him and he started buying them also by the dozen, always via Zborowski. The latter found himself, thanks to Netter, at the head of a genuinely new market and of a bunch of young artists who suddenly found themselves propelled forward by this new generation of dealers and collectors.

Chaïm Soutine - L’Escalier rouge à Cagnes - c. 1918 - Oil on canvas, 61,6 x 46,5 cm. - Private Collection - © Adagp, Paris 2012 - © Photo : Pinacothèque de Paris / Fabrice Gousset

Valadon and Kisling were also part of that group of painters, as well as many others, just as wonderful even if they did not necessarily attain the same notoriety: Kremègne, Kikoïne, Hayden, Ébiche, Antcher and Fournier.

La Pinacothèque de Paris will show, for the first time ever, a group of never before exhibited works by Modigliani that recreates, alongside other works we have managed to find, Jonas Netter’s collection such as it was in his own time.
The Pinacothèque de Paris is therefore very proud to be able to partake in this outstanding discovery and to undertake Jonas Netter’s first wish, i.e. that the largest possible public should have access to these marvels.

Museum Hours

Istanbul Modern - photo: Bünyamin Kıvrak - Panoramio

Permanent Exhibition – Istanbul Modern
A museum is a home for art. It provides an alternative to the forces of consumption and production that we experience in our daily lives. As well as serving to protect, document and exhibit art, a museum also feels like a spiritual place where art can live and breathe. Art knits together a complex web of relationships, aside from the chronological, thematic and stylistic approaches that characterize exhibitions. A museum is the point where the viewer and the artist intersect. It is a safe haven where art can establish itself.

“New Works, New Horizons” presents the evolution of modern and contemporary Turkish art from its earliest stage to the present day and features the most prominent artists and works in Turkey. The texts to the side of each work discuss the social, cultural, economic, and political dynamics of this development. These texts show that each work of art is embedded in life and that art develops in tandem with its context. Considered together, these texts trace the significant changes in Turkish art that occurred during the 20th century.

The “Working Area” is a small hall where concurrent developments in contemporary art are examined and displayed. The exhibition format, which brings together artists from different places, aims to bolster the creativity of artists and artistic initiatives by providing a venue for their projects.

The İstanbul Modern Collection features works encompassing diverse disciplines, ranging from painting to sculpture and from installation to video.

Museum Hours

Frances Hodgkins - The piano lesson Production Date:c 1909 - watercolour and charcoal - (hxw):515 x 595 mm - Frances Hodgkins - :Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2007

Until March 11, 2012 – Auckland Art Gallery
In 2007, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki acquired these 20 paintings by expatriate New Zealand artist Frances Hodgkins. Painted in the first decade of the 20th century, they were hidden away in a drawing folio before the original owner’s family discovered them in 2007.

These sketches may have served as teaching points for her many students, but how they came to be in a French private collection remains a mystery.

When Hodgkins exhibited similar watercolours in Sydney and Melbourne in 1912-13, she told a reviewer how she had gone to England in 1901 looking for colour and light. Unable to find it, she ‘fled to France’, where she attended Norman Garstin’s sketching class at Caudebec-en-Caux.

However, it was her trip to Morocco the same year that proved a turning point. Mediterranean culture provided Hodgkins with a simplicity of architectural forms, sparkling light and strong colour, all elements of what eventually became her own highly individual style.

In Paris, Hodgkins revelled in debates, experimentation and the desire for new forms of expression which were central to the avant-garde movements. We see Hodgkins pushing the boundaries of traditional watercolour, using the kind of experimentation that eventually transformed her into one of the leading English modernists of her day.

Gallery Hours