International Art News

François Bard - Paulette 2011 - oil on canvas - 195 x 150 cm.

Until the 11th of June 2011 – Mazel Galerie
The close centrings on the subject, the legs, the torsoes or faces put his work within an avant-gardist conception of painting, which has integrated the contribution of photography into contemporary art.

François Bard’s aesthetics is different from a large part of current painting which is influenced by the legacy of American Pop-Art or the new wave of Street Art, as his works are much closer to Edward Hopper, Giorgio de Chirico and Edouard Manet than to Andy Warhol.

His characters or his landscapes seem to be isolated within a space the boundaries of which are indefinite and allow us to escape « somewhere else ».
These large surface areas may evoke the desolate setting that is described in Dino Buzzati’s novel Tartars’Desert, one of his reference books.
The background which reveals endless surface areas focuses our attention on the subject, the small pieces of sentences and enigmatic words sprinkled on the surface of the canvasses.
The atmosphere which emanates from all these elements arouses the feeling that time is suspended and it conveys an unspeakable feeling of void.

The timelessness of his works is emphasized by choices in compositions which remind us of those made by masters of painting.
« Fait divers » or « No Man’s Land » are symptomatic of his taste for compositions drawn from famous names of the history of fine arts.
« L’Homme Mort » (« The Dead man ») which Edouard Manet painted between 1864 and 1865, depicting the body of a matador lying on the sand of the arena which itself refers to medieval sculpture and to the traditional countenance of recumbent statues, is a perfect illustration of this kinship.
Thanks to this centring, Manet gave his matador a Christ-like dimension, while François Bard gives his henchmen wearing gloves the appearance of peace-making angels, kinds of imaginary body-guards of a paranoid society which is afraid of the individuals who are part of it.
The artist fully assumes this biased view and claims that he is « on a sacred side of painting ».

However, far be it from him to establish a distance with those who watch his works, as his sources of inspiration and his models come from his daily life and  from people around him.
He asserts : « it is from daily life that I try to paint my imaginary world.»

But through his longing for timelessness and sublimation, the artist does talk about us in his paintings.
The link between his daily life and our world is to be seen in the realism and naturalism of his pictorial technique, strengthening the kinship between his work and Manet’s. Edouard Mazel

Galerie Hours

Andy Warhol's "Shadows" series, 1979 (Dia Art Foundation)

From April 21 to July 29, 2011 – The Arts Club of Chicago
This is the first time a single installation of a large number of the panels from Shadows has been exhibited in Chicago. Shadows was acquired by the Dia Art Foundation from the artist during its inaugural exhibition at the Heiner Friedrich gallery in New York in 1979. It has been on permanent view at Dia:Beacon, Dia Art Foundation’s museum of renowned artworks from the 1960s to the present, located on the banks of the Hudson River in Beacon, New York since 2003. The entire installation of Shadows (102 panels) will be exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, in the fall of 2011.

The Arts Club will install 54 of the 76 x 52 inch panels abutted and in random order. Shadows, 1978–1979, was created contemporary to Warhol’s series of Oxidations, and following his Skulls, and Hammer and Sickles, and before the Diamond Dust Shoes. Ronnie Cutrone, Warhol’s painting assistant at the time, said of Shadows’ inception:

Andy had a burning desire to do abstract art… and I said, “you’re Andy Warhol; you should paint something that is something, but it’s not… you should paint shadows. You love shadows anyway. They’re all in your work”… I had 150 shadow photographs on contact sheets twelve days later. We picked some of them out and then he asked me to mix the colors for them.

Two photographs were chosen to be silkscreened over the painted backgrounds. The impasto texture of some panels was achieved by applying the paint with a mop. The palette was chosen from Warhol’s favorite colors: “aubergine, chartreuse, carmine red, yellow, midnight blue… and white.”

Shadows was a singular work for Warhol, both in its nod to abstraction and in its scope. The installation of Shadows was used as a backdrop for a fashion editorial in the April 1979 issue of Warhol’s magazine, Interview. When questioned whether the paintings were art, Warhol self-depreciatingly answered, “No. You see, the opening party had disco. I guess that makes them disco décor.”

Andy Warhol studied pictorial design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. Following a successful career as a commercial illustrator in New York in the 1950s, he exhibited silkscreened paintings beginning in 1962, eventually becoming both a cultural icon and a major component of the Pop Art movement. He was not only known for his work, but he himself had an immense impact on the contemporary sociocultural milieu, from designing album covers for the band Velvet Underground and founding the magazine Interview, to creating films and overseeing his Factory and its infamous scene. Warhol’s work was exhibited widely throughout the world during his lifetime and after, and both he and his work continue to be a major force in contemporary art and culture.

Andy Warhol: Shadows is organized by Dia Art Foundation.

Arts Club Hours

27 November 2010 to 26 February 2011- Institute of Modern Art
Performance artist Luke Roberts has been a key figure in the Brisbane art scene for over three decades. He has developed an intricate personal mythology that collapses personal and political, local and cosmological, and past and future to offer a unique spin on themes of religion, sexuality, and human history.

Roberts started doing drag performances as Alice Jitterbug in the early 1970s. In the late 1970s, this persona was superseded by Pope Alice, who was related in part to both Pope Joan (the legendary cross-dressing female pope) and Lewis Carroll’s Alice. According to Roberts, Pope Alice came from the planet Metalluna, and landed at Alice Springs, giving her name to the place. Through this alternative-pontiff persona, Roberts has been able to contest the Catholicism in which he was raised (particularly its repressive attitudes to sexuality), while drawing on its paraphernalia and iconographies.

Roberts has created works in many different media, however photography is central to his practice. Much of his work can be characterised as ‘performance for photography’. The heart of AlphaStation/Alphaville is a new body of photographic work produced over the last two years. The exhibition’s title refers to Roberts’s birthplace of Alpha (a backblocks Queensland town) and to Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 sci-fi movie, set on another planet far in the future but shot in everyday locations in Paris). Much of the work finds Roberts returning to his birthplace and making work with family members. There is a lot of self-portraiture. Roberts plays an indian (with his father) and a shaman (with his mother), and imagines himself as Hitler, Andy Warhol, and Edie Beale. He also appears with Indigenous artist Richard Bell, in works that address the legacy of Australia’s colonial history. The new works will be prefaced by a ‘greatest hits’ selection of his earlier photographs.

Gallery Hours

Martini Miss #2, 2004 88x58,5 cm

From the 11th of November 2010 to the 7th of January 2011- Galerie Hafenrichter
Mel Ramos (born July 24, 1935) is a U.S. figurative painter, whose work incorporates elements of realist and abstract art. Born in Sacramento, California, he gained his greatest popularity in association with the Pop Art movement of the 1960′s.

Mel Ramos received his first important recognition in the early 1960s; since 1959 he has participated in more than 120 group shows. Along with other artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and James Rosenquist, Ramos produced art works that celebrated aspects of popular culture as represented in mass media. His paintings have been shown in major exhibitions of Pop Art in the U.S. and in Europe, and reproduced in books, catalogs, and periodicals throughout the world.

The classification of Ramos within any particular school of art is disputed. Some critical observers of the “art scene” classify Mel Ramos as a pop artist. However, others believe identification of Ramos’ work within the Pop movement of the 1960s implies a satirical or parodic bent which does not reflect the broader context of his paintings, and instead defend his “parodies” as respectful, affectionate tributes, a celebration of images with personal meaning.

Galerie Hours

Elizabeth Catlett, Sharecropper, 1952. Linocut. 17 3/4 x 17 in.

From Sept. 28 to Dec. 11, 2010 – Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts
Huckleberry Finn is the third show in a trilogy of Wattis Institute exhibitions that are based on canonical American novels. In 2008, The Wizard of Oz revealed layers of political symbolism and escapism, while in 2009, Moby-Dick delved into the seemingly futile struggle between good and evil. In 2010, Huckleberry Finn will look at Mark Twain’s investigation of racial tensions in America through an international lens. All three stories have major themes related to exploration and (self)discovery, and the corresponding exhibitions function as metaphorical journeys through which the audience experiences various notions of America’s reality, both contemporary and historic. Established and emerging contemporary artists from around the world are invited to address the key themes of the books and the historical moments in which they were written. Many of the artists create new commissions specifically for the shows.

This investigation of America and its realities through the lens of literature by means of artworks, artifacts, and historical documents is unique to the Wattis Institute. Huckleberry Finn will encompass a wide range of works, including painting, sculpture, film, video, drawing, and photography.

Artists include:

Edgar Arceneaux
Ruth-Marion Baruch
Romare Bearden
Elizabeth Catlett
Claude Clark
Abraham Cruzvillegas
Jamal Cyrus
Emory Douglas
Geoffrey Farmer
Simon Fujiwara
Ellen Gallagher
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Rodney Graham
David Hammons
Clementine Hunter
Edward W. Kemble
Dorothea Lange
Tim Lee
Henry Lewis
Glenn Ligon
Pare Lorentz
Jason Meadows
Kristen Morgin
Thomas Nast
Kirsten Pieroth
Horace Pippin
Betye Saar
Yinka Shonibare MBE
Allison Smith
Alec Soth
William Desmond Taylor
Hank Willis Thomas
Kara Walker
Andy Warhol

Through the lens of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, this exhibition addresses issues of racism, the violent history of slavery, and struggles for equality. The first floor provides an introduction to the novel through ephemera such as first editions, reviews from the book’s initial publication, photographs of Mark Twain, and the 1920s silent film adaptation. Historical artifacts and artworks generate a portrait of the American South and African-American life under slavery. The second floor is entirely devoted to newly commissioned and contemporary artwork that reflects upon themes from the book. The resulting narrative provides viewers with a sense of the book’s history, a portrait of the time it was written, and contemporary reflections on the controversial work.

2010 marks the 125th anniversary of the first publishing of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain’s passing. Since 1885 when the novel was first released, it has been consistently censored in libraries and schools for its repeated use of racial slurs and its arguably ambiguous depiction of Jim, an African-American slave. While it is counted as one of the most important works of American literature, it still tops the banned book list in America, revealing that its underlying issues of intolerance, racism, and struggles for equality are not things of the past, but still vividly alive in our society. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not a relic, but a living reminder of the problems of racism that still riddle our society.

The Wizard of Oz, Moby-Dick and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn all conjure up romantic nostalgia for the American dream, where freedom and adventure perpetually lie on the horizon. Taken at face value, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn chronicles the epic adventure of a boy Huck and his loyal friend Jim as they raft down the Mississippi river. They meet rapscallions, narrowly dodge family feuds, and deepen their burgeoning friendship, all while helping Jim reach freedom. Looking further into the narrative, it is a portrait of the time and an intimate look at a young boy’s self-education. While many have charged Twain with racism because of his repeated use of racial slurs in the novel, this reading is an oversimplification. Though slavery had been abolished when Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published, Jim Crow laws were an ongoing and violent form of oppression. Twain’s portrait of the South in the 1830s details the hypocrisy of racism that continued through his time and ours.

Generous support for Huckleberry Finn provided by Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation; Laura and Joe Sweeney; the British Council; and Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam.

Art Center Hours

From 5 September 2010 to 23 January 2011 – Kunstmuseum Basel
In the early 1960s, after a successful career as a commercial artist, Andy Warhol decided to devote himself to the fine arts. Even so, consumerism and the media-oriented nature of mass production continued to be the main thrust of his work. The exhibition highlights the artist’s seminal years from 1961 to 1964. It was then that Warhol
made the transition, step by step, from an individual visual idiom to mediatized, collective visual material and, along with it, to mechanized production. In consequence, he called into question the very foundations of artistic categories in the age of modernism. The exhibition is the first ever to explicitly address this transitional period in Warhol’s oeuvre, demonstrated, for example, by the fact that in 1962 Warhol painted more than one variation on the same picture.

One version may show traces of the gestural and expressive painting process while another – though still painted by hand – already shows the diagrammatic reduction and coolness of his later work. In selected groups of work, viewers can study his approach to silkscreening on a monochromatic ground. Paintings or drawings of Campbell´s Soup Cans and Dollar Bills are especially indicative of the scope of his work from the gestural beginnings to repetitive series of prints. The exhibition culminates in the famous Star series of Elvis and Liz, a gallery of Death & Disaster and the first Flowers series of 1964.
Some 70 paintings and drawings will be on view, including major works from the holdings of the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Kupferstichkabinett.

Museum Hours