International Art News

Clyfford Still 1949-A-No.1, 1949 Oil on canvas, 93 x 79 in. © Clyfford Still Estate

Until September 2, 2012 – Norton Museum
American Masters at the Norton:
Three exceptional canvases by Joan Mitchell and Clyfford Still, each a master of late twentieth century American painting,  will be on view at the Museum from March 22 through the Fall of  2012.  Still (1904 – 1980) is credited with laying the groundwork for the Abstract Expressionism movement, which is exemplified by a variety of styles from the pour paintings of Jackson Pollock to Mark Rothko’s fields of luminescent color. Until the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum last year, there were few public insitutions where his sublime, remarkable canvases could be seen. On view at the Museum are 1949-A-No.1 (1949) and PH-1033 (1976). Although younger than Still, Mitchell found her voice (as did many other artists of succeeding generations) within the style of gestural abstraction. While the very action of the manner of painting was powerful, Mitchell (and her peers) reinterpreted it, using paint directly from tubes, applying it with her hands and conceiving of compositions that worked from the center out, rather ethan over the entire surface of her canvas. These characteristics are seen in the untitled canvas by Mitchell (circa 1960) also on view.

Museum Hours

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG The Ancient Incident (Kabal American Zephyr), 1981-06 Patinaed cast bronze 86 1/2 x 91 x 21 inches (219.7 x 231.1 x 53.3 cm)

From September 28 to November 12, 2011 – Gagosian Gallery Paris

There is no poor subject. A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting than wood, nails, turpentine, oil, and fabric.
– Robert Rauschenberg

Rauschenberg stands as one of the most inventive artists in American art, arguably the first of his generation to chart a viable course out of Abstract Expressionism towards the formal integration of art and the mess of life. His approach to making art using discarded materials, everyday objects and appropriated images eviscerated the distinctions between medium and genre, abstraction and representation, while his “flatbed picture plane” created an enduring change in the relationship between artist, image, and viewer. From the outset, the incidental, the immediate, and the perception of a presence greater than his own artistic virtuosity drove Rauschenberg’s creative energies. By working in what he called “the gap between art and life” he developed an altogether new visual language based on collage as a microcosm of the unbounded world that rejected the conventions of unitary meaning advanced by high art.

In the early Elemental Sculptures, Rauschenberg stripped the medium to its fundaments, using fragments of found wood, brick, concrete and iron to create sculptures and pedestals possessing a quiet humility that belies their latent energy. His unending fascination with the incidental materials that he came across in the urban environment is evident in two floor-based works, Hue Cart (1982), a little tricycle wheel jauntily positioned between three candy-striped construction poles, or The Brutal Calming of the Waves by Moonlight (1981), a simple yet forceful consisting of a crushed metal drum from which a large piece of scrap metal thrusts out into space.

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG Overdrive, 1963 Oil and silkscreen ink on canvas 84 x 60 inches (213.4 x 152.4 cm)

Throughout his life, Rauschenberg also experimented with new ways to construct a pictoral surface — from dye transfer to silkscreen and chemical imprint — producing potent accumulations of collaged images that address their reproducible nature while re-envisioning the relation of art to life. In his humorously titled Urban Bourbon series from the early 1990s, found images such as a baby buggy, rocky seashore or a Greek statue are printed directly onto metal supports, then brushstrokes of varnish and lacquer are applied to transform the reflective surfaces creating interplay between control and chaos in layered and veiled similitudes.

The exhibition, presented in collaboration with the Estate of Robert Rauschenberg will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Robert Rauschenberg was born in 1925, in Port Arthur, Texas and died on Captiva Island, Florida in 2008. He has been the subject of numerous exhibitions worldwide including “Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective,” the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1997) (traveled to the Menil Collection, Contemporary Arts Museum and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, through 1999); “Combines,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2005) (traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, through 2007); and “Gluts,” the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (2009), traveled to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 2010.

Gallery Hours

Mel Ramos Della Monty, 1971 Oil on Canvas Private Collection © VBK Vienna, 2011

18 February to 29 May 2011 – Albertina
The Albertina will dedicate a broad exhibition to the important Pop Art exponent Mel Ramos. The occasion of the exhibition was the Californian artist’s 75th birthday in 2010 as well as a celebration of over fifty years of the Pop Art movement. A representative selection of Ramos’s oeuvre, it focuses primarily on his paintings, and also includes preliminary sketches. The major works on display cover the entire spectrum of the artist’s creative phases, from the figurative depictions departing from abstract expressionism in his early paintings, through to his pictures of comic heroes and Wonder Woman from the 1960s, and, of course, the commercial pin-ups that made Ramos famous in the late 1960s. In his satire on brand advertising, the humorous artist depicts stylish pin-up girls in these oil paintings, wrapped lasciviously around giant Coke bottles, cigarette packets and pieces of diced cheese. The exhibition also features the series A Salute to Art History, in which the artist peps up nude pictures of classical masters with pop culture’s sex appeal, and paintings of Californian landscapes that most people.

Museum Hours

Parc de la Villette – Until the 15th of August
The Parc de la Villette presents the last works of the sculptor Duane Hanson, considered today as the major artist in American hyperrealism. In the 60s, he developed his own artistic style and distinguished himself from the then dominating abstract expressionism current in the US.

Duane Hanson passed away in 1996 and has hardly been exhibited in France, and yet he is still very much of our times, as his critical view of American society between the 1970s and 1990s can find an echo in the utter distraught many find today in our own society.

The exhibition includes 15 sculptures, in resin and fibreglass, more real than life itself. Through his works the artist represents “today’s stars”, a cleaning woman, a student, a worker, a retired man. And he explores the sense of life, the life of each one of us.

The exhibition foments a surprising encounter with these characters, both touching and critical of our contemporary lives.

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