| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Monday, January 7, 2019 |
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| | The art of shedding light on gifts with possible Nazi ties | |
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Kunstmuseum Bern director Nina Zimmer poses next to a painting by Henri Matisse entitled "The Blue Blouse" in Bern on December 4, 2018. When Georges F. Keller began donating paintings by masters like Henri Matisse and Salvador Dali to the Kunstmuseum in Bern his reputation was not in doubt. The Swiss-Brazilian national had been a respected art dealer who gifted 116 works to the museum from the 1950s until his death in 1981. But earlier this year, the Kunstmuseum's provenance researcher came across an archival document linking Keller to Etienne Bignou, a man now considered a "red-flag" dealer because he traded art with Germans in Nazi-occupied Paris. Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP.
by Ben Simon
BERN (AFP).- When Georges F. Keller began donating paintings by masters like Henri Matisse and Salvador Dali to the Kunstmuseum in Bern his reputation was not in doubt. The Swiss-Brazilian national had been a respected art dealer who gifted 116 works to the museum from the 1950s until his death in 1981. But last year, the Kunstmuseum's provenance researcher came across an archival document linking Keller to Etienne Bignou, a Frenchman now considered a "red-flag" dealer because he traded art with Germans in Nazi-occupied Paris. For the Bern museum, the potential fallout of gifts with possible Nazi ties was not new. The museum was the sole heir of hundreds of major pieces left behind by Cornelius Gurlitt, who died in 2014 and whose father, Hildebrand, was tasked by the Nazis with selling art stolen from Jews or confiscated as "degenerate" works. The case captured huge global attentio ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Eli Wilner & Company announced a continued commitment of funds from several private benefactors to assist not-for-profit or government supported institutions with their framing and frame restoration needs. For projects of significant historical importance, these patrons are often able to offer substantial matching funds towards a curatorial team's available budget. In this image: A master artisan in the Eli Wilner & Company studio applies gold leaf to the surface of a replica of an 18th Century frame.
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 | | Romanian engineer who saved churches during communist era dies | | Christian Lethert gallery exhibits works by Imi Knoebel | | Eli Wilner & Company announces 2019 Matching Funds for Museum Framing Projects | 
In this file photo taken on November 01, 2017 Engineer Eugeniu Iordachescu gives an interview at his place in Bucharest. Iordachescu died at the age of 89, his family announced on January 6, 2019. Daniel MIHAILESCU / AFP.
BUCHAREST (AFP).- Engineer Eugeniu Iordachescu, who devised an ingenious method to save Romanian churches threatened with destruction during the communist era, has died aged 89, the Romanian Patriarchy announced Sunday. Iordachescu was working as a civil engineer in the 1980s when communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu launched a plan to build a massive "House of the People" in the centre of Bucharest. But that involved demolishing 10 churches, some dating back to the 16th century. Iordachescu set his mind to saving as many as he could. "After months of wracking my brains, God enlightened me," he told AFP in a 2017 interview. Inspired by how waiters carrying glasses on a tray without spilling a drop, he imagined a concrete tray built under the churches. Detached from its foundations, the church was lifted and placed ... More | | 
Imi Knoebel, 2018. Installation view, Galerie Christian Lethert. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Christian Lethert. Photo: Simon Vogel.
LONDON.- The artist Imi Knoebel from Dusseldorf is presenting works of a radical, minimalistic form language at the Christian Lethert gallery. Alongside "Mennigebild," the exhibition combines works from the "Betoni" and "Cementi" series and also shows the film ReichsstraÃe 51. The "Mennigebild" pictures are irregular polygons resulting from the fusion of rectangular shapes. Through this method of layering, Imi Knoebel has developed an exciting arsenal of forms. The title refers to the Mennige anti-rust paint the artist initially used for the monochrome surface of the large-format plywood panels; thus it was the first colour to enter his oeuvre. However, the work on show, Mennigebild 6/53, was painted with black iron oxide. "Mennigebilder" were shown for the first time in 1981 at the Dia Art Foundation in Cologne, and since 1982, eight pictures and two sculptures are in the possession of the foundation. With his "Betoni" (1990) ... More | | 
A master artisan in the Eli Wilner & Company studio gilds rows of beads that will later be applied to a replica of a 19th Century frame.
NEW YORK, NY.- Eli Wilner & Company announced a continued commitment of funds from several private benefactors to assist not-for-profit or government supported institutions with their framing and frame restoration needs. For projects of significant historical importance, these patrons are often able to offer substantial matching funds towards a curatorial team's available budget. As of January 2019, the available funding is not as generous as in prior years, so institutions are advised to submit their projects with some urgency. Reframing and frame restoration proposals are currently being received and reviewed on a near daily basis by the Wilner gallery staff who hope to be able to accommodate as many projects as possible. In 40 years of business, Mr. Wilner and his staff of frame historians and studio artisans have accomplished dozens of complicated, unique, and important framing projects for some of the most famous institutions in the U ... More |
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| | | Regina Vater in retrospective show at Jaqueline Martins | | Exhibition at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea presents the work of Harun Farocki | | Swedish 'Museum of Failure' features Trump board game | 
Tropicália series, 1968.
SAO PAULO.- Some 50 works, including photographs, videos and installations, are being featured in the downtown São Paulo gallery. The artist was inarguably a pioneer in exploring connections between society, nature and technology. Regina Vaters entire oeuvre straddles the line between political action and art creation. In her internationally known photo-performance Tina América, from 1976, she utilizes her own image to represent social and ethical conjunctures in Latin America, says the shows organizer Jaqueline Martins. In Reginas own words: any type of art, if unconsciously, is a process of getting in touch with the creative and regenerative forces of the universe. The artists research has always featured exercises on more comprehensive themes, like time and its relationship with native myths, as well as topical, pressing issues seen through the lens of feminism ... More | | 
Harun Farocki, Inextinguishable Fire, 1969.
SEOUL.- Since 2015, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea has programmed exhibitions and programs that express the intense relationship between art and cinema as one of the most prolific areas of creativity and aesthetic impact that define our time and culture. Artists have always sought new possibilities for innovative uses of film and images in general. After the exhibitions of Philippe Garrel A Dazzling Despair (2015) and Jonas Mekas Again, Again, It All Comes Back to Me in Brief Glimpses (2017), the museum introduces the work of Harun Farocki (19442014). Offering insights into the way images are used to understand and control the world, Farocki criticizes the violence of media and industrial technology toward humanity. Exploring the background of sociocultural phenomena and tracing the identity of images that accompany the powers that ... More | | 
Components of 'Trump - the Game,' a boardgame themed around Donald Trumps's real estate business, originally released in 1989 and then again in 1990, on display at the 'Museum of Failure' in Helsingborg, Sweden. Tom LITTLE / AFP.
HELSINGBORG (AFP).- Cased in glass and lit up by neon lights, the Donald Trump board game, the plastic bicycle, an electric beauty mask, bottles of Green Ketchup and a host of other unlikely innovations have found fame again in Swedens Museum of Failure. The museum, one floor of a cultural centre in the coastal town of Helsingborg, is the work of psychologist Dr Samuel West, a 44-year-old Californian who used to research how to make big companies more innovative. "I was looking for a new way to communicate research findings and stimulate a discussion and interest in the whole concept of learning from failure and I thought an exhibit would be a fun way to do that," West said. Launching ... More |
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| | | bitforms gallery opens Counterparts, UVA's first solo exhibition with the gallery | | MAAT Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology opens exhibition of works by João Louro | | Exhibition explores the growing market for women artists today | 
UVA, The Etymologies (diamond), 2017. Custom software, custom electronics, LED, aluminum, wood, 32.9 x 32.9 x 1.8 in / 83.5 x 83.5 x 4.5 cm. Edition of 3.
NEW YORK, NY.- New Dawn invites the viewer to consider how technology mediates our experience of reality. The light-based sculpture is comprised of two windows displaying dynamic patterns of light and shadow that suggest leaves falling or blowing in the wind. Like prisoners in Platos Cave, viewers know only these shadows until circling the windows to reveal their inner workings: each slat features a row of concealed LEDs that project light onto its subjacent slat. A Distant View is a series of reliefs inspired by the images of the Moons surface provided by the Lunar Orbiter missions of 1966-67. These photographs were transmitted to Earth as processed data after onboard scanning of the original films, then reconstructed at NASA to create detailed images of the Moons topology. A Distant View reimagines this process of capturing and reconstructing ... More | | 
João Louro, Linguistic Ground Zero, 2018 Installation view, MAAT, Lisbon, 2018. Photo: Bruno Lopez.
LISBON.- João Louro's solo project Linguistic Ground Zero is featured at MAAT (Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology), in Lisbon. Designed for the MAAT Project Room, Linguistic Ground Zero reflects on this moment of historical inflection in which art and society seem to be in agreement with the need to end everything. His proposal is a reproduction of "Little Boy" - the first atomic bomb in history, which devastated the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. As with most bombs, in which soldiers write messages, this reproduction also carries with it inscriptions - in this case, the texts refer to art, politics, culture and vanguards. The curator, David G. Torres writes, "João Louro's starting point is the relationship between the physical destruction caused by the atomic bomb and the symbolic destruction that is part of different avant-garde strategies." Louro establishes a confluence between the physical destruction ... More | | 
Lesley Dill, Girl Articulated, 2007, sewn lithograph, 36 1/2 x 29 inches.
SANTA FE, NM.- Peters Projects of Santa Fe announces RISING TIDE: 12 Women Artists on view through March 15, 2019. Curated by Art Critic Garth Clark, RISING TIDE explores the growing market for women artists today. As Clark states, After being becalmed for decades the plight of the woman artist, undervalued in the arts, is finally changing and has become a rising tide. While it has a way to go, new benchmarks are being achieved every day. Jenny Savile has just set an Auction record for a living woman artist at Sothebys London of $12.4 million for Propped (1992), on October 5, 2018. It beat out Cady Nolands Bluewald (1989), which went for $9.8 million at Christies New York in May 2015. Of course skeptics will point to the recent record by David Hockney for a male living artist. Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold at auction in New York for $90,312,500, at Christies auction house on November 16, 20 ... More |
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| | | 2018 BP Portrait Award on view at the National Galleries of Scotland | | Leo Asemota and Nástio Mosquito present exhibition at Portikus | | Monumental work by Berlinde De Bruyckere on view at Museum Hof van Busleyden | 
Miriam Escofet (b. 1967). An Angel At My Table, 2017. Oil on linen over panel, 1000 x 700 mm. © Miriam Escofet.
EDINBURGH.- The 2018 BP Portrait Award exhibition, which is on view at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, features 48 stand-out works including An Angel at my Table by Miriam Escofet, which took this years first prize. An Angel at my Table shows Escofets elderly mother seated at her kitchen table surrounded by tea crockery. The painting suggests a sense of space, perspective and time which conveys the sitters inner stillness and calm. Escofet says she was also conscious whilst painting that she wanted to transmit an idea of the Universal Mother, who is at the centre of our psyche and emotional world. A delightful and accomplished portrait by National Galleries of Scotland staff member Laura Nardo is also being displayed as part of this years BP Portrait Award exhibition. The painting, titled LTR Team A, which features Nardos fellow Security and Visitor Services ... More | | 
Installation view.
FRANKFURT.- The first meeting between the curators Philippe Pirotte, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, and Christina Lehnert, and the artists Leo Asemota and Nástio Mosquito began with an Ulónga, an Angolan tradition in which generally one recounts what one has experienced, thought, and felt since the last meeting. This conversation served as the starting point for the exhibition #215 in spring 2018. The format of communal speech is part of a series of cultural conversation techniques such as the Palaver which, apart from its everyday meaning, dates back to a form of assembly in which decisions are first made when a consensus has been arrived at through conversation. Here, decisions are not the product of pre-established abstract rules but rather develop over the course of a conversation. The fact that Leo Asemota could only be streamed in to the first Ulónga via Skype in Philippe Pirottes office reveals a dimension that has also determined ... More | | 
The contemporary artist Berlinde De Bruyckere (1964, Ghent) first encountered the magical "Enclosed Gardens" from Mechelen in 2016. © Mirjam Devriendt.
MECHELEN.- The brand new Museum Hof van Busleyden is presenting monumental work by Berlinde De Bruyckere in Mechelen, Belgium. The world-famous Belgian artist engages in a dialogue with the institutions masterpieces, the newly restored "Enclosed Gardens," which have recently begun to attract considerable interest once again. The contemporary artist Berlinde De Bruyckere (1964, Ghent) first encountered the magical "Enclosed Gardens" from Mechelen in 2016. She was immediately gripped by the fragility and beauty of these 16th-century retable cases, which have been given a permanent home at the museum. Mechelen Enclosed Gardens are 16th-century masterpieces that have recently been restored and researched. When opened, the wooden cases reveal paradisiacal walled gardens. Their imagery is unique. The many objects in all ... More |
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Is MoMA haunted? | GHOST STORIES
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 Heji Shin presents two new bodies of work at Kunsthalle ZürichZURICH.- Heji Shin is a New Yorkbased German-Korean photographer. She works commercially on projects such as fashion shoots as well as in theno less commercialart world. Shin became known, amongst others, for her images commissioned by the American fashion label Eckhaus Latta and for Make Love, a much-discussed sex education book for teenagers, as well as for the image series #lonelygirl and Babies. Heji Shin's photography raisesfrom a variety of perspectives and with great audacity the question of intimacy. At the center of intimacy sits always trust, something that is today called into question on all sorts of levels (think of fake news, misuse of data, skepticism towards experts, etc.). Yet intimacy is the fulcrum between our body and the public sphere, capable, at turns, to protect or expose us. Currently undergoing a reevaluation ... More Johannesburg's grandest old colonial club seeks new imageJOHANNESBURG (AFP).- With its imposing columned facade, hunting trophies and oil portraits, the Rand Club in Johannesburg's city centre is a relic of South Africa's colonial and apartheid past. Founded in 1887 by British mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, it was the favoured venue for white businessmen and free-wheeling gold prospectors to strike deals and socialise in the hushed library or at the 31-metre-long (102-feet) teak bar, reputedly the longest in Africa. But Alicia Thompson, a black woman born in Johannesburg, is seeking to reposition the club, which has struggled to stay open in recent years, by attracting the city's "young hustlers" of today while preserving its heritage. Thompson, a 46-year-old beauty business owner who is the club's deputy chairman, said that she had faced "not one iota of resistance" in her efforts to haul the club into the modern ... More New details revealed about Angelica Mesiti's exhibition for the Australian Pavilion at the Venice BiennaleSYDNEY.- The Australia Council for the Arts announced Angelica Mesitis exhibition for the Australian Pavilion at the 58th Biennale di Venezia will be a multi-screen installation titled ASSEMBLY. One of Australias most celebrated and internationally profiled contemporary artists, Angelica Mesiti works across video, performance and installation. Mesiti has developed a practice characterised by large-scale video and sound works. She is known for using cinematic language and performance to explore stories of the individual and the collective. ASSEMBLY engages with sound, music, performance, choreography and the moving image said Angelica Mesiti, and I use these forms of expression to explore the musical tropes of polyphony, cacophony, dissonance and harmony which, in the film installation I am creating, can be understood as metaphors for the range ... More New digital commission captures the everyday lived experience of the 1918 influenza pandemicLONDON.- This ambitious 365-day digital commission by Jordan Baseman marks the centenary of the 1918 influenza pandemic, known as the Spanish Flu. Commissioned by Wellcome, Radio Influenza explores and interprets how news, rumour and health information and dis-information were shared and experienced through newspaper accounts at the time. Over the course of a year, a daily audio piece captures the everyday lived experience of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed at least 50 million people worldwide. Listeners can follow the reports through a dedicated website, podcast, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter feeds. The 1918 influenza pandemic was one of the most significant and wide-reaching international health crises of the twentieth century, which killed at least 50 million people worldwide. Jordan Baseman has developed Radio Influenza ... More Mystetskyi Arsenal presents 'Revolutionize: Reflections on revolutionary history unfolding in the present'KYIV.- Where democracy is under pressure and crisis reigns, alternative participatory models are developed, as evidenced by the recent worldwide gulf of revolts and protest movements. One of the brightest among them was the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity. The group-exhibition Revolutionize marks the 5th anniversary of this mass protest that took to the street in 20132014. Departing from Kyivs Independence Squarethe very heart of the Ukrainian protest movementthe exhibition Revolutionize can be seen as an exercise, an attempt at imagining the future narrative of the newly-established Museum of the Revolution of Dignity. This memorial museum doesnt have a permanent venue yet, however it is responsible for a collection of numerous objects and artifacts of the recent revolution. This became the starting point for the commissioned project entitled ... More The Empty Quarter Gallery presents exhibition by the Italian photographer John R. PepperDUBAI.- The Empty Quarter Gallery, Dubai is presenting the exhibition Inhabited Deserts of the Italian photographer John R. Pepper. In his essay on INHABITED DESERTS Kirill Petrin writes: Most people in the Western world are indifferent to deserts. Deserts are away. They are elsewhere. They are thousands of miles away and the definition of empty, and their associations rarely go beyond arid, dead, mystic, frightening, mysterious, flat, hot, cold, beautiful, ugly, dangerous. John R. Pepper's deserts are not ultimately the result of travel photography. His photographs, paradoxically, dont take you to the actual places where they are shot. They take you elsewhere, to a new place for your mind and imagination to inhabit. Matisse once said his art ... More Exhibition by New York based French textile artist Sebastien Courty opens at Fann A PorterDUBAI.- Fann A Porter announced to the opening of Totem: A Walls Jewellery, an exhibition by New York based French textile artist, Sebastien Courty, Monday 7 January at 7 pm. The exhibition will present twelve individual hand-woven, wall-mounted textile installations represented as totems, embodying different countries with their natural and manufactured resources. The twelve countries included in the exhibition are United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, South Africa, India, and Afghanistan. Weaving is talking is the statement that underlines Sebastien Courtys entire practice. For this exhibition, Courty does the talking through his intricately woven wall-pieces, which he calls totems and that each represent a country. The artist presents twelve individual hand-woven, wall-mounted textile installations ... More 'Oh, Shenandoah: Landscapes of Diversity' exhibit on view at the Virginia Museum of History & CultureRICHMOND, VA.- The Virginia Museum of History & Culture is displaying a selection of masterful landscape paintings by Washington, D.C., based artist Andrei Kushnir. These breathtaking works capture the extraordinary beauty and vitality of the Shenandoah Valley region, qualities that enticed pioneers to settle there and inspired artists from all over the world to travel there. The buildings and patterns of land distribution that are the substance of Kushnir's paintings provide tangible evidence of the Valleys settlement and diversity, from communities and historic sites to farmlands and waterways. Fifty-two of Kushnir's 263 painted landscapes of the Valley are being featured in this exhibition, with the entire body of his Valley landscapes pictured and described in the exhibition's companion catalog available for sale in the VMHC museum shop. Kushnir ... More National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens presents a selection of recently acquired works of artATHENS.- In the framework of the museums extroversive strategy and just before its full operation, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens presents a selection of works acquired during 2017 - 2018 from 5th December 2018 to 20th January 2019. This exhibition is a continuation of New Acquisitions 2014-2017 presented from November 2017 to January 2018. Historical and contemporary works by 22 major practitioners, donated by artists and outstanding Greek collectors, reinforce the existing sections of the collection and add new directions in terms of research and reflection on the issues of contemporary art. At the core of the new acquisitions in the EMST collection is the significant and generous donation of 68 works - mainly of Greek artists from various generations - by collector Mr Dakis Joannou, as well as a large donation of works ... More Exhibition pushes the boundaries and possibilities of how we picture the landscapeSAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Haines Gallery is presenting A Cure for Everything, a group exhibition bringing together works by nine artists working in photography, print, and video. Employing alternative or experimental techniques, each of the artists in the show push the boundaries and possibilities of how we picture the landscape. The exhibitions title is drawn from Isak Dinesens short story, The Deluge at Norderney, in which four strangers at a seaside resort trade tales as they seek refuge from rising floodwaters. As in Dinesons writing, the works featured in A Cure for Everything picture the sea specifically, and nature generally, as place for healing and regeneration; a place for leisure and the implications of class access which follow; as destructive, regenerative, sublime, fragile, and ultimately essential. A Cure for Everything includes new works by 2018 Guggenheim ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, English painter and educator Thomas Lawrence died January 07, 1830. Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA FRS (13 April 1769 - 7 January 1830) was a leading English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. In this image: Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769 - 1830) Portrait of the Hon. Emily Mary Lamb (1787 - 1869), 1803. ©The National Gallery.
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