art exhibit

Caravaggio Exhibit Opens In Rome

Filed under: Art

The dramatic art of Caravaggio is getting a new showcase in Rome. Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, a Catholic church with a distinctive corkscrew dome and a courtyard designed by Baroque artist Borromini will host the show until May 15. The AP reports that the exhibit includes a portrait of Pope Paul V. That pontiff spared Caravaggio's life, lifting a death sentence against the mercurial artist after he fled Rome in 1606 for killing a man in a duel. That painting was last shown in Florence 100 years ago.

Caravaggio's chiaroscuro stylings, the vivid contrast of dark and light, seemed to play out in his life as well as on the canvas. He was known for his temper and his quickness with weapons. He remains popular partly because of the obvious drama and energy in many of his works. The exhibit also includes paintings by artists mentioned by Caravaggio in his writings, some described as bad, others as good. The inclusion of these works adds a little background to what life was like for this always opinionated artist.

Tags: art, art exhibit, caravaggio, rome

Major Botero Exhibit In Miami Runs Through The End Of The Month

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

You only have another week or so to check out a comprehensive display of the work of Fernando Botero's work in Miami, Florida. Gallerist and art book publisher Gary Nader has gathered together a collection of the Colombian artist's work in order to celebrate the launch of a new art book on Botero.

Botero's rounded forms are immediately recognizable. He's famous for his corpulent figures but has also done still life paintings and bronze sculptures that showcase his range as well as a series of paintings depicted prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. Recent works reflect his enduring fascination with circus performers and circus life. In a culture that often sees fat as a four-letter word, Botero's paintings normalize roundness giving it dignity.

Nader gathered pieces from collectors around the world. The show is up only through January 31 and includes a chronological assortment of more than 100 paintings, sculpture and drawings dating from the 1950s to the present day. Nader's gallery houses $200 million of the most impressive collections by U.S, Latin and European masters. Accompanying the Botero Retrospective is a hard cover edition of 224 pages with close to 200 full color page illustrations, published by Nader and priced at $150.

Tags: art, art exhibit, art gallery, fernando botero, miami art

Eden Rock "Uncovers" Latest Art Exhibition

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels, Art

The year is coming to an end, and that means the art gallery at Eden Rock is filling up. As peak season hits down on St. Barths, the gallery becomes home to endless excitement, and it should be higher than in the past few years, as the art market bounces back from its late 2008 and early 2009 depths.

This year, the Eden Rock Gallery will be home to an exhibition called "Uncovered," running from December 22, 2010 through January 31, 2011. Hosted in partnership with the New York Academy of Art and curated by Eileen Guggenheim, Peter Drake and David Kratz, it will include 24 pieces by artists affiliated with the academy, with work by faculty and members of the Artists' Advisory Board of the Academy on the walls, too. Rosson Crow, Kurt Kauper, Natalie Frank, Alyssa Monks, Robert Feintuch, Julie Heffernan and Margaret Bowland are among the artists being featured.

Gallery: "Uncovered" at the Eden Rock Gallery

Gallery: Villa Rockstar, Eden Rock, St Barths

The Bar and Dining Area at Villa Rockstar, Eden Rock

The Private Pool at Villa Rockstar, Eden Rock

The Living Area at Villa Rockstar, Eden Rock

Tags: art, art exhibit, art exhibits, art galleries, Art Gallery, art market, art show, eden rock, st barths

Continue reading “Eden Rock "Uncovers" Latest Art Exhibition”

ArtWeLove: A Great First Step for Aspiring Art Collectors

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

When I first started writing about the art market, in the white-hot auction climate of the summer of 2007, I had the chance to interview Prof. Michael Moses of NYU. Co-founder of the Mei-Moses Index used to gauge the direction of art prices, he's pretty much the de facto source for issues at the intersection of art and investing. I'll never forget the advice he offered to my readers: start with prints of your favorite pieces, and as you can afford to, replace them with the real thing.

This is the exact concept I saw in action when I stopped by the ArtWeLove booth at the Affordable Art Fair to visit company founder Laurence Lafforgue.

Art We Love focuses on making works by high-caliber artists available to entry-level collectors. The archival pigment prints offered by the company are limited-edition reproductions of museum-caliber pieces from well-known artists who have agreed to work with Lafforgue to make the art luxury attainable to a broader constituency.

Tags: affordable art, affordable art fair, affordable artwork, art collecting, art collection, art collector, art exhibit, Art Exhibition, art exhibits, art fair, art market, art show, artist, Artists

Continue reading “ArtWeLove: A Great First Step for Aspiring Art Collectors”

"Earth Leak": Art Brings Disaster to Manhattan

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

As I walked the aisles of New York's Affordable Art Fair this past weekend, hoping to meet artists who'll someday become the mainstays of the auction scene, a powerful installation stopped me dead in my tracks. Black paint dripped from a white orb, which was suspended above a pile of once-white everyday household items. A milk carton and shoe, among other things, slowly turned black, as did the map of the world upon which they rested. An entanglement of pipes spread out from the dirtying action, and a quiet man sat on the floor beneath one of them, looking content and relaxed.

So, I had to interrupt his piece.

This is how I met Kamol Akhunov, the artist responsible for "Earth Leak". Inspired by the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Akhunov's installation drives home the message that a disaster thousands of miles away can affect our daily lives, as suggested by the black paint falling upon the pile of household goods, as well as the map beneath them.

Gallery: Earth Leak at the Affordable Art Fair

Artist Kamol Akhumov with Earth Leak at the Affordable Art Fair

Tags: affordable art, affordable art fair, affordable artwork, art exhibit, Art Exhibition, art exhibits, art fair, art show, artist, Artists, artwork, gulf of mexico, Gulf of Mexico oil leak, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Gulf of Mexico spill, manhattan, new york, new york city, oil, oil spill

Continue reading “"Earth Leak": Art Brings Disaster to Manhattan”

Ronnie Woods To Show Art In Ohio

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Events, Art

Rolling Stones guitar player Ronnie Wood is the latest celebrity artist to have a big show. The show at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio will be the first exhibit of Wood's work at a major U.S. museum and will include 30 paintings, 22 drawings and seven mixed-media pieces.

Wood has been painting and drawing since he was a child and specializes in portraiture but also does landscapes. Before becoming a musician he studied at Ealing College of Art in London. He has always continued painting and drawing often making pictures of friends, family and the musicians he has played with. His work has been exhibited around the world. Wood plans to attend the opening of the Butler Institute exhibit on September 21. The show will run through November 21.

On his website, Wood showcases images of Mick Jagger, Slash, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Al Pacino and more.

Gallery: Celebrity Artists

Tags: art, art exhibit, art exhibits, celebrity artists, rolling stones, ronnie wood

Bank Of America Showcases Western Art

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Events, Art

Last month I wrote about an exhibit featuring Bank of America's contemporary art holdings in Charlotte. Should you be interested in seeing the works of another artist in the B of A holdings you'll need to travel to Kansas City, Missouri. That's where the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art will be presenting Romancing the West: Alfred Jacob Miller in the Bank of America Collection from September 25, 2010-January 9, 2011. The exhibit showcase the work of the Baltimore portraitist who in 1837 was invited on the adventure of a lifetime, tagging along with Scottish nobleman Captain William Drummond Stewart and the American Fur Company expedition on a six-month adventure to the Rocky Mountains. They trekked along the Oregon Trail to the annual gathering of the fur trade and Miller was one of the first American artists to bring the images of the American West to vivid life.

The exhibit shows 30 works on paper not seen in the public since 1964. Miler made more than 100 field sketches during the expedition, sketches that became the inspiration for at least a thousand paintings and watercolors. The six-month journey set him up for the next three decades as he received commissions for albums of watercolors and full-sized oil paintings that he produced in his studio. The works from the Bank of America Collection represent intermediary work based on his field sketches and done in preparation for the commissioned work.

"We are thrilled to share Miller's work with the general public," said Margaret C. Conrads, Samuel Sosland Senior Curator, American Art, at the Nelson-Atkins and curator of the exhibition. "Viewers will find that fact mixes with fantasy to reflect life on the frontier both as it was and as it was imagined to be."

After debuting at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art the exhibition will head to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2011.

[via Art Fix Daily]

Tags: american west, art exhibit, Art Exhibition, art exhibits, bank of america, museum exhibit, museum exhibition, nelson-atkins museum, western art

Cher's Son Takes On Celebrity In Second Art Exhibit

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Events, Art

Artist Elijiah Blue knows a lot about the world of Hollywood fame, he's the son of Cher and Gregg Allman. His latest exhibition "Stuff of Legends", presented by Kantor Gallery and Madison Gallery follows the success of his sold out inaugural exhibition "Step-and-Repeat" at Kantor Gallery, with the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art acquiring the final piece.

"Stuff of Legends" and "Step-and-Repeat" are both commentaries on the union of celebrity and commerce. "Step-and-Repeat" looked at the commercial medium of the step and repeat backdrop found on red carpets. "Stuff of Legends" is a further abstraction and smaller study on the nuances of the first series of paintings in "Step-and Repeat." Both take a Warhol-like look at logos and Blue explores the "current celebrity condition" as an Orwellian device. In an interview with ArtInfo in February for the "Step-and-Repeat" exhibit Blue said: "I watch Jersey Shore. I love it. I watch it and I am corrupted, and I am the symptom. I am not above any of this - there is no escaping what we have become. I am just commenting on it."

The exhibition runs at the Madison Gallery 23410 Civic Center Way, Malibu, CA 90265-310.317.8787

Tags: art, art exhibit, celebrity artists, cher, elijiah blue, gregg allman, madison gallery

New Louise Bourgeois Exhibit Opens In Venice

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

Artist Louise Bourgeois died last month at the age of 98 but her unique legacy lives on in Venice, where an exhibition in the Magazzino del Sale planned before her death opened June 5. Bourgeois was working in her studio home until the end and the exhibit "Louise Bourgeois. The Fabric Works" will be the last show of her work that she was actively involved in.

The exhibit was curated by Germano Celant in collaboration with Jerry Gorovoy of the Louise Bourgeois Studio, New York. The works are montages, collages and assemblages of pieces of her own clothes and linen and one of her famous large steel sculptures Crouching Spider, 2003, presides over exhibition in Venice. Pieces include her Fabric Drawings created between 2002 and 2008. Check out a few images from the exhibit at the Fondazione Vedova website

[via Art Daily]

Tags: art, art exhibit, louise bourgeois, museum, venice

Artist Puts New Spin On The Mona Lisa

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

Classic works of art get a new spin through the eye of New York artist Devorah Sperber. Devorah Sperber: Threads of Perception will go on exhibit at the Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah August 21-October 31, 2010. Sperber's most recent work takes famous paintings from art history like the Mona Lisa shown above. Using a computer she pixelates the images and then uses spools of thread to serve as pixels. The spool-constructed pieces are mounted inverted so that the image is viewed upside down and recognizable only when viewed through an acrylic sphere. Looking at it through the naked eye it appears as a blur of color but when viewed through the sphere it pops into focus. The Kimball Art Center will feature 13 of Sperber's pieces in the exhibit, "Threads of Perception" in the Main Gallery August 21- October 31, 2010.

Tags: art, art exhibit, art exhibits, devorah sperber, mona lisa smile

Picasso Revealed and Revered at the Met

by Bobbie Leigh (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Events, Art

You think you've seen it all? Not a chance. Picasso may be the most researched artist of all time, even his laundry receipts have been studied, but the new exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art yields something new at every turn. "Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art" showcases some 300 works, the museum's complete collection of the artist's paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, and works on paper.

The show's magic comes from its all encompassing range starting with a 1900 self-portrait of Picasso at 19 (and yes, he was a knockout) and ending with an exuberant musketeer, painted when he was 87. What's totally new and positively riveting are a series of10 videos that demonstrate how Picasso worked, reworked, and revised. Just one example is his melancholy 1901 "Woman Ironing," depicting a sad-faced woman pushing down vigorously on one of those heavy irons that had to be heated on a hot stove. The Met's technical team revealed that originally her knuckles were visible and the slope of her neck was amended. The scientific analysis also showed that there is a totally different composition beneath the final painting. One theory is that either Picasso or another artist painted the earliest version. Now, totally restored, it is a supreme example of Picasso's one time conviction that "art emanates from sadness and pain."

Tags: art exhibit, art exhibits, metropolitan museum of art, Pablo Picasso, picasso

Continue reading “Picasso Revealed and Revered at the Met”

Met Museum's Guards Show Don't Just Watch: They Paint, Too

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art, Charity

The Upper West Side of Manhattan was once again home to an exciting and unique art exhibition last week. 25CPW, a temporary art gallery occupying a vacant retail space on Central Park West hosted an art show for a unique group within the Metropolitan Museum of Art: the guards. It turns out that some of the people protecting the masterpieces on the other side of Central Park also like to create, and from what I saw on Thursday night, when I attended the opening, they are pretty damned good at it.

The Thursday night opening also included the launch of Sw!pe Magazine: Guards' Matter, an art journal that accompanied the exhibition.

On display were paintings, drawings, photographs and other pieces. The styles varied but were displayed intelligently, preventing contrasting styles from crowding each other and leaving each artist enough space for his work to stand out. Nelson Diaz, an artist and friend who attended the how with me, was as electrified as I was – both by the works on display and the energy in the 25CPW space.

You can view the NY Times photo gallery here.

The next 25CPW event is on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 night at 6:00 PM, when the Afghan Art Auction will be held to benefit the George Dritsas Anthropos Fund. The fund was created to help refugees in transition, so do find a way to open your wallet. The money raised will also be used to help the Afghan Women Council, which seeks to assist women and children inside Afghanistan.

From the inaugural event at 25CPW:

Gallery: 10 from 25: Emerging Artists using Photography

Source

Tags: art exhibit, art exhibits, art galleries, Art Gallery, art show, central park, central park west, drawing, drawings, manhattan, metropolitan, MetropolitanMuseumOfArt, new york, new york city, painting, paintings, Upper West Side

Bob Dylan's Art To Go On Display In London

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Celebrity Shopping, Art

We mentioned Bob Dylan's career as an artist a few years back but the musician's first ever show of his works on canvas will open on Saturday February 13 at the Halycon Gallery in London. The new work represents his artistic journey from the drawings in The Drawn Blank Series to works on paper and now finally to canvas. The Drawn Blank Series of drawings and sketches were also gathered into a book.

The paintings are based on drawings and sketches made while he was on the road during the period of 1989 - 1992. In a press release Dylan said of his own work, "I just draw what's interesting to me, and then I paint it" and says that he can find inspiration anywhwere. His work, which includes both landscapes and personal scenes, contains some of the same everyday poetry aspect that his songs also capture. The show will run through April 10.

[via ArtDaily]

Tags: art exhibit, ArtExhibit, bob dylan, bob dylan art, BobDylan, BobDylanArt, celebrity artists, CelebrityArtists, halcyon gallery, HalcyonGallery, london

Eden Rock Gallery Looks Between People and Places

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels, Art

There's a new show at the Eden Rock Gallery on St. Barths this month ... and it represents a bit of a departure from past exhibitions. Doubtless, some considerable talent has moved through the resort's art gallery, with names such as Richard Prince not to be taken lightly. And, the relationship with the New York Academy of Art has ensured that the artists in residence have been unmatched in talent.

The latest show is not short on talent and remains consistent with the reputation the Eden Rock Gallery has defined for itself, but the artist comes from a little closer to home. Jane Matthews will be showing her work in an exhibition entitled "Between Places and People," which features simple but direct subject matter in a fluid style slightly reminiscent of Gaugin (just a hint).

Jane owns Eden Rock with her husband, David Matthews, and it's their commitment to the arts that led to the gallery and the careful selection of pieces to hang in the property's various villas (such as Villa Rockstar).

With "Between Places and People," Jane proves that she doesn't just know how to pick art – she can create it, too. The photos alone caused me to fall in love with this show.

Gallery: “Between Places and People” by Jane Matthews at Eden Rock Gallery

Tags: art, art exhibit, art exhibits, art galleries, Art Gallery, art show, ArtExhibit, ArtExhibits, ArtGalleries, ArtGallery, ArtShow, Eden Roc hotel, eden rock, EdenRocHotel, EdenRock, St Barths, StBarths

North Korean Art Goes Commercial

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

Jinghesheng Investment Company and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are now partners in the art market. The investment firm and the most isolated dictatorship in the world are working together to show and sell 90 paintings at art galleries in Beijing. The paintings – 60 of them oil and 30 in the traditional Korean ink style – will be rotated through the gallery and sold.

The unifying thread in this show is that all works are by artists in North Korea ... and have been approved by the DPRK's Ministry of Culture, according to exhibit director Li Xuemei. Because information doesn't flow easily across the border, the exact origins of the pieces and details of the artists are unknown, but Li says to CNN, "Ours are surely authentic artworks from DPRK."

There has been no shortage of interest in the display. Li's gallery, which is showing the works of 20 North Korean artists associated with Pyongyang museums and art institutions, sees up to 100 visitors a day on the weekends and 60 a day during the week.

Source

Tags: art exhibit, art exhibits, art galleries, Art Gallery, art show, ArtExhibit, ArtExhibits, ArtGalleries, ArtGallery, ArtShow, Beijing, china, dprk, north korea, NorthKorea