International Art News

Louise Bourgeois, Arch of Hysteria, 1993. Courtesy Cheim & Read and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Allan Finkelman - ©Louise Bourgeois Trust- Louise Bourgeois Trust/VAGA, New York, by SIAE 2012

From May 8 to November 4, 2012 – Galleria dell’Accademia – Firenze
The exhibition Art Returns to art, curated by Bruno Corà, Franca Falletti and Daria Filardo, will see the installation in the rooms of the Galleria dell’Accademia of works by: Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Alberto Burri, Antonio Catelani, Martin Creed, Gino de Dominicis, Rineke Dijkstra, Marcel Duchamp, Luciano Fabro, Hans Peter Feldmann, Luigi Ghirri, Antony Gormley, Yves Klein, Jannis Kounellis, Ketty La Rocca, Leoncillo, Sol LeWitt, Eliseo Mattiacci, Olaf Nicolai, Luigi Ontani, Giulio Paolini, Claudio Parmiggiani, Giuseppe Penone, Pablo Picasso, Alfredo Pirri, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Renato Ranaldi, Alberto Savinio, Thomas Struth, Fiona Tan, Bill Viola, Andy Warhol.

Louise Bourgeois’s Arch of Hysteria, hung with all its charge of “life’s emotional frenzy” in front of Pontormo’s Venus and not far from Michelangelo’s David,will offer definitive proof of how the naked form of the human body can be used to express concepts and stir sensations that are vastly different. And the effort to bring form out of brute matter, something which obsessed Michelangelo all his life, seems to still weigh heavily today on the shoulders of Giuseppe Penone in his arduous hollowing out of massive tree trunks, just as it is echoed in the forms carved out of concrete by Antony Gormley.

Giulio Paolini’s L’altra Figura will be located almost opposite Bill Viola’s video Surrender: two contemporary ways of reappraising and interpreting the theme of mirroring and reproducibility that lead, in the left arm of the Tribuna, to the 19th-century Salone dei Gessi, filled with plaster casts that were created so lely to be reproduced.

The theme of reflection is also explored in Alfredo Pirri’s floor of fractured mirrors, in Olaf Nicolai’s work Portrait of the Artist as a Weeping Narcissus, whose tears ripple the surface and alter the reflected image, and in Michelangelo Pistoletto’s mirror picture Sacra conversazione, which includes us in a conversation of the present day.

Metaphorically, mirroring becomes a merging with the gaze of the visitor, who is conceptually made part o f the creative process in Rineke Dijkstra’s video installation that tells of a slow observation and reproduction of one of Picasso’s pictures, in Thomas Struth’s photo in front of Dürer’s self-portrait and in Martin Creed’s performance with athletes running swiftly through the spaces of the gallery.

Marcel Duchamp, L'invers de la peinture, 1955 circa, 73,5 x 48 cm ,private collection, by courtesy of collector

The reproduction, repetition and circulation of images in the history of art is tackled from a critical perspective in the works of Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Luigi Ghirri, Hans Peter Feldmann and Ketty La Rocca, which refer directly to icons familiar to everyone. In his Untitled, Jannis Kounellis will recall the iconography and sense of tragedy of the Crucifixion, a theme tackled in a different way in Alberto Burri’s work and in Renato Ranaldi’s Triumphans, while the gold or ultramarine monochromes of Yves Klein can be related to the gold grounds of the 14th-century altarpieces.

Yves Klein, L’esclave de Michel-Ange, 1962, pure pigment and synthetic resin on synthetic resin, 60 x 22 x 15 cm, © Yves Klein, ADAGP, Paris

The casts of the David’s eyes in Claudio Parmiggiani’s work po se the problem of the fragment, while Leoncillo and Luigi Ontani’s images of Saint Sebastian present different visions of that sacred iconography. The gaze at the past will appear emblematic and mysterious in Alberto Savinio’s Nettuno Pescatore as well as in Gino de Dominicis’s Urvasi e Gilgamesh. Interesting reflections on the work of the past will also be provided by Francis Bacon’s Figure sitting (the Cardinal), Pablo Picasso’s Arlequín con espejo and Sol LeWitt’s drawings of Piero della Francesca’s frescoes, as well as by the ovoid volumes of Luciano Fabro’s Il giudizio di Paride or Eliseo Mattiacci’s large iron sculpture Carro solare del Montefeltro. Memory as recognition of origins will be the focus of Fiona Tan’s film Provenance, and the classical elements of museum architecture are the form out of which Antonio Catelani develops his Klettersteig. (©Art of the Day)

Firenze Musei

Kamagurka - The End of Cubism - 2012

From the first of May to the first of August 2012 – Arentshuis and other locations
Artist, painter, theatre and television producer Kamagurka (Luc Zeebroek) will act as curator for a special art project in Bruges: Kamarama. On several locations he will display his own works as well as works of other artists who inspire and fascinate him. It will be an exhibition full of remarkable art, surprising perspectives and a certain amount of humour.

Kati Heck - check - 2012 - courtesy Jan Mostmans

The Arentshuis will act as a live atelier in which Kamagurka will display his own art works. From time to time he will create a new work here, by himself or together with other artists such as David Bade (May 1), Stephen Tunney (May 3 & 4), Werner Mannaers (May 17 & 18), Jeroen Henneman (June 28 & 29) and Muzo (July 10 & 11).

Roland Topor

In the Garemijn Hall, Kamagurka displays works from artists who inspired and influenced him. He likes to combine historic and contemporary art. He’s also fascinated by international links and the use of mixed media in art.

Kamagurka - Retrospective VII (kubistische smurfin) - 2012

Displayed artists: Capitaine Lonchamps (B), David Bade (NL), Don Van Vliet a.k.a. Captain Beefheart (US), Emile Salkin (F), Francis Picabia (F), Fred Bervoets (B), George Condo (US), George Grosz (D), Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes (F), Herr Seele (B), J.J. Grandville (F), James Ensor (B) , Jan Fabre (B), Jeff Olsson (S), Jeroen Henneman (NL), Kati Heck (D), Luc Tuyman s (B), Lucebert (NL), Marcel Duchamp (F), Markus Lüpertz (D), Max Ernst (D), Muzo (F), Otto Dix (D), Pablo Picasso (E), Paul Joostens (B), René Daniëls (NL), René Magritte (B), Rinus Van de Velde (B), Roland Topor (FR), Stephen Tunney a.k.a. Dogbowl (US), Werner Mannaers (B), Wim Delvoye (B), Wim T. Schippers (NL) and Yves Obyn (B).

Herr Seele - Cowboy Henk, 2011 - courtesy of the artist

You will also see art works in the streets of Bruges such as his ‘accidental’ portraits of fictive people. There will be 12 portraits spread around the Arentshof garden and alongside the Dijver. If you think you recognize a family member, friend or acquaintance in one of the portraits, you can report this on this website. At the end of the project, Kamagurka will choose the one who is the best lookalike of one of his portraits.

Kamarama

Jean Cocteau avec un revolver 1926 Berenice Abbott Épreuve gélatino argentique, 35,5 x 28 cm. Ronald Kurtz / Commerce Graphics. © Berenice Abbott / Commerce Graphics Ltd, Inc

From 21 February 2012 until 29 April 2012 – Musee du Jeu de Paume
With Berenice Abbott (1898-1991), urban experience is at the heart of the exhibition: in an America shaken by the Wall Street Crash, her images of 1930s New York convey her fascination with an urban landscape in the throes of dramatic change. Also known for championing the work of Eugène Atget, Abbott, who originally wanted to be sculptor, proved to be a great photographer of matter, space and light.
This is the first exhibition in France to cover every stage of Berenice Abbott’s career, featuring over 120 vintage prints by this American photographer as well as a series of documents never previously shown. The selection of portraits, architectural photographs and scientific plates shows the many facets of a body of work all too often reduced to a handful of familiar images.

Berenice Abbott came to the French capital in the 1920s and was trained by Man Ray before opening her own studio, where she began a successful career as a portrait photographer. Mixing in the artistic and intellectual circles of the day, she photographed a cosmopolitan cast including Eugène Atget, Marcel Duchamp, James Joyce, Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, Sylvia Beach, André Gide, Foujita, Max Ernst, and Marie Laurencin.

Park Avenue et 39e rue, New York 8 octobre 1936 Berenice Abbott Épreuve gélatino argentique, 19 x 24,5 cm. Museum of the City of New York. Gift of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. © Berenice Abbott / Commerce Graphics Ltd, Inc.

The exhibition also features a substantial selection of images form her Changing New York project (1935-1939), for which she is best known. This undertaking was Abbott’s own initiative but was financed by the Works Progress Administration, part of Roosevelt’s New Deal efforts to combat the Great Depression. Conceived as both a record of the city and a work of art in its own right, this ambitious government commission focuses on the contrast between the old and the new in the rapidly changing city.
The photographs she took in 1954 when travelling along the US East Coast on Route 1 (the exhibition is presenting a never previously exhibited selection of these) reflect her ambition to represent the whole of what she called the “American scene.”
In the 1950s, Abbott produced a set of photographs illustrating the principles of mechanics and optics for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Combining aesthetic and educational concerns, these abstract, experimental images echo her photograms of the 1920s.
An active participant in the avant-garde circles in the 1920s, a determined opponent of Pictorialism and the school of Alfred Stieglitz, famous for bringing Eugène Atget to international attention, Berenice Abbott spent her whole career exploring the notions of documentary photography and photographic realism. This retrospective at Jeu de Paume brings out the richness of her approach, and both the diversity and unity of her work.

Museum Hours

Salvador Dalí - Frontispiz für André Breton und Paul Éluard, L'immaculée Conception, 1930-Radierung Sammlung - Gilbert Kaplan, New York, Photo: Ardon Bar-Hama/VBK, Wien 2011

From November 30, 2011 to January 15, 2012 – Albertina
In parallel to the Magritte exhibition the Kaplan Collection will be presented, uniting outstanding Graphic Art by the Surrealists Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí and many more important exponents of this art movement. These artists share a common devotion to the unreal and the fantastic. The Graphic Art presented in this exhibition will impressively illustrate how close the real and the unreal lie together in Surrealistic Art and will tempt the viewer to let his imagination  run free.

“Surrealism was a revolutionary idea in the arts in the early 1900s and 1920s, and is still a powerful influence on contemporary art,” according to McMullen Museum Curator Alston Conley. “These prints trace the development of the main figures in the surrealist movement from 1919 to 1971.”

Marcel Duchamp-H.O.O.Q., 1964 - Bleistift auf Reproduktion - Sammlung Gilbert Kaplan, New York, Photo: Ardon Bar-Hama/VBK, Wien 2011

The exhibition features over 100 prints by the foremost artists of the Surrealist movement. Works by Rene Magritte, Joan Miro, Hans Bellmer, Yves Tanguy, Giorgio de Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso and Man Ray will be among those included in the exhibition.

Museum Hours

Salvador Dalí Rêve causé par le vol d’une abeille autour d’une pomme-grenade, une seconde avant l’éveil, 1944 Huile sur bois, 51 x 41 cm Musée Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid © Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation / 2011, ProLitteris, Zurich

From the 2nd of October 2011 – to the 29th of  January 2012 – Fondation Beyeler
This major exhibition on the art of Surrealism will provide insights into one of the most influential artistic and literary movements of the twentieth century. Born in the avant-garde metropolis of Paris, Surrealism was represented by such outstanding artist personalities as Dalí, Duchamp, Ernst, Giacometti, Magritte, Miró, Oppenheim and Picasso. In their often baffling and highly imaginative imagery, the Surrealists addressed the dream, the irrational, and the workings of the unconscious mind. On view in our spectacular exhibition will be over one hundred works from world-renowned museums and private collections.

Museum Hours

Robert RAUSCHENBERG 29.7 x 37 x 38.3 cm. Shades, 1964 Lithograph on plexiglas on metal support and a lightbulb

From June 8 to October 30, 2011 – Moscow Museum of Modern Art
The Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents the exhibition «Masterpieces of the 20th Century from the Collection of the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (IVAM)».

It is remarkable that the IVAM and the MMoMA collections are similar to each other in many respects. Each collection counts over 10,000 exhibits and tends to present a panoramic view of modern art in all its diversity, with special emphasis on the national heritage. So it comes as no surprise that the Moscow Museum of Modern Art hosts this important exhibition.

The IVAM collection presents an overview of the avant-garde art of the first decades of the 20th century and all art tendencies of the postwar period. The art of Julio González, a pioneering Spanish artist and sculptor of the first half of the past century, occupies a special place in the IVAM holdings. The IVAM holds the richest collection of his artworks. The exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art opens with Julio González’s oeuvre together with the works by Torres Garcia, a Uruguayan artist of the early 20th century. Also on view at the Museum, will be kinetic sculptures by Alexander Calder, installations by Kurt Schwitters and Man Ray, abstract works by František Kupka and works by classic Surrealist and Dadaist masters Joan Miro, Marcel Duchamp, André Masson, Jean Arp.

The exhibition will show experimental tendencies of the postwar period, which reflected a newly formed worldview. These are works by European masters, i. e. Antoni Tàpies, Antonio Saura, Karel Appel, Ad Reinhardt, Pierre Soulages, and works by celebrated American artists, i. e. Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra. Works by American Pop-art artists, such as Richard Hamilton, James Rosenquist and European representatives of this tendency, such as Eduardo Arroyo, Equipo Crónica group and others will also be exhibited.

Starting from the 1980s, artists have been actively using new media, new techniques and electronic devices. The IVAM responded to the new art trends early on and acquired for its collection works by Andreu Alfaro, Miquel Navarro, John Davies, Bruce Nauman, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Christian Boltanski, Eduardo Chillida and Juan Usle. Some of these artworks will be displayed at the exhibition «Masterpieces of the 20th century». Postwar Modern Art will be represented at the exhibition by the works by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

Since the IVAM holds the most extensive and valuable collection of photography in Spain, a section of the exhibition is devoted to photography of the past century. Among other photo masterpieces of the 20th century, the show will feature a work by Alexander Rodchenko, one of the greatest Russian photographers.

Museum Hours