The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Monday, November 21, 2022

 
Anselm Kiefer raises history's ghosts

“Mésopotamie” (“Mesopotamia”), a cycle of Anselm Kiefer paintings installed at La Ribaute, the artist’s estate in Barjac, France, Sept. 30, 2022. On his vast estate in southern France and in two new U.S. exhibitions, the German-born artist conjures a world that hovers in the penumbra between life and death. (Anselm Kiefer; Julien Mignot/The New York Times)

by Roger Cohen


BARJAC.- For Anselm Kiefer, there is no innocent landscape. The German artist, born beneath the bombs of the last months of World War II, sees in everything a cycle of ruin and rebirth. From dust and debris something stirs. Here at La Ribaute, the sprawling property in southern France where he lived and worked for 15 years, Kiefer has created a labyrinth of his obsessions in the form of more than 70 often disconcerting works installed on-site. Leaning towers made of discarded ship containers defy gravity to send shadows into rippling pools. A large amphitheater, hung with fading reels of film, is a monument to possibility and decay, from its upper light-filled balconies to the cloying tunnels beneath the stage. Dried sunflowers and books fashioned from lead are recurrent themes of a world that hovers in the penumbra between life and death. “If there were no death, we wouldn’t be,” Kiefer told me in an interview. “It is how we are defined. I think about this, but not in a mor ... More



The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
Tate Modern offers a rare opportunity to explore an extraordinary body of work by Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz known as Abakans.








Regen Projects is currently presenting works by German artist Daniel Richter   15 Cycladic antiquities of unique archaeological value are presented for the first time   'Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle Of Thread And Rope ' opens at Tate Modern


Daniel Richter, Empty the Apartment, 2022. Oil on canvas, 86 5/8 x 65 inches (220 x 165 cm).

LOS ANGELES, CALIF.- Regen Projects is currently presenting Furor II, an exhibition of new paintings by German artist Daniel Richter. This marks the artist’s fifth solo presentation with the gallery. The exhibition began on November 3rd, and will continue through December 23rd, 2022. Richter came to prominence in the 1990s with bold, gestural, colorful, and even psychedelic abstract paintings that gained attention in the wake of Germany’s neo-expressionist Junge Wilde generation. Though he found early critical success with the riotous formal language of his abstract works, Richter has continually refused to settle into any single defining style. Steeped in the canon of German painting, Richter’s own work does not so much as undertake the projects of his forebears as it dissects and cannibalizes them in his pursuit of new meaning. Toward the beginning ... More
 

Paris Tavitian © Museum of Cycladic Art.

ATHENS.- The antiquities presented –ten marble figurines and five vases made of marble, steatite and clay– cover a wide chronological range, from the times of the Late Neolithic period to those of the Early Cycladic II period (c. 5300 – 2400/2300 BC). The figurines depict solely the female figure and belong to types and varieties corresponding to the styles of each period (schematic, precanonical, canonical), while the vases represent some of the most characteristic types of vessels covering the entire Early Cycladic period. As stated by the President and CEO of the Museum of Cycladic Art, Kassandra Marinopoulou: “An exceptional and largely unknown collection of Cycladic antiquities by the American collector Leonard N. Stern, with rare and unique artefacts progressively makes its way back home. This is a historic moment for our country, for the Museum of Cycladic Art, but also for me personally, as we are participating in ... More
 

Installation view.

LONDON.- Tate Modern offers a rare opportunity to explore an extraordinary body of work by Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz known as Abakans. Made of organic materials such as horsehair, sisal and hemp rope, these complex three-dimensional forms broke new ground for art in the 1960s and 70s. Bringing together 26 of these radical works for the first time in the UK, the exhibition presents a forest of towering sculptures, enabling visitors to explore their ambiguous forms and earthy scents. With a career spanning over 50 years, Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930-2017) changed what it meant to be a sculptor and led the way for other artists working with fibre. Having grown up among the rural landscapes outside Warsaw, Poland, she took inspiration from the myth, folklore and spirits of the forest – themes that would eventually lead the artist to create new worlds through her work. Although she came of age during the traumatic ... More


National Museum of American History adds key blues archive   The Baltimore Museum of Art opens exhibition of works by five recent Baker Artist awardees   "On the Horizon: Art and Atmosphere in the 19th century" opens at the Clark Art Institute


Throughout 2023, several yet-to-be-announced projects from multiple divisions of the Smithsonian, including from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and Smithsonian Books, will feature selected material from this historic collection.

WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has accepted the donation of the late Robert “Mack” McCormick’s significant blues and folklore archive as a gift from his daughter, Susannah Nix. The extensive collection consists of 590 reels of sound recordings and 165 boxes of materials, totaling more than 70 cubic feet of unpublished manuscripts, original interviews and research notes, thousands of photographs and negatives, playbills, posters, maps, booking contracts and business records. The archive includes extensive history of the blues and blues musicians. Throughout 2023, several yet-to-be-announced projects from multiple divisions of the Smithsonian, including from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and Smithsonian Books, will feature selected material from ... More
 

David Page. one hundred years without progress. 2021-2022. Courtesy of the Artist. © David Page.

BALTIMORE, MD.- Baltimore, Addressed: Baker Artist Awards unites works by five recent awardees who respond to the past, present, and imagined future of the city. Laura Amussen (interdisciplinary, 2020); David Page (visual arts, 2019); Ernest Shaw Jr. (visual arts, 2022); Susan Waters-Eller (visual arts, 2020); and Pamela Woolford (interdisciplinary, 2022) have each created works that speak to their geographic or social experiences in Baltimore. Some delve into the city’s complex histories and challenges, while others celebrate the city’s rich natural and intellectual resources, painting the future leaders of this American metropolis. The exhibition is on view on the third floor of the BMA’s Contemporary Wing from November 13, 2022, through March 12, 2023. Baltimore, Addressed encompasses a variety of multimedia installations, paintings, drawings, video, photography, and archival materials. Laura Amussen is presenting a 40-foot ... More
 

Unknown artist (British, active first half of 19th century), Iron Works, c. 1815–30, transparent and opaque watercolor over graphite, with gum arabic, on beige wove paper, mounted on cream paperboard. Clark Art Institute, Gift of the Manton Art Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton, 2007, 2007.20.41

WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.- Over the course of the nineteenth century, scientists, artists, and society at large developed a deeper understanding of air. Earlier, natural philosophers had demonstrated that the ambient atmosphere was not an “airy nothing” but an entity of substance, with distinct properties and capacities. This material conception of air and atmosphere continued to evolve in the nineteenth century as meteorologists turned their attention skyward. On the Horizon: Art and Atmosphere in the Nineteenth Century examines how artists and image makers incorporated new scientific and technological understandings of the atmosphere into their works and creative practices. The exhibition is on view in the Eugene V. ... More



Exhibition brings together a selection of rare and unique pieces sourced exclusively in Brazil by Jorge Zalszupin   MCA Chicago opens its new exhibition 'Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-Today'   Martin Gropius Bau opens an exhibition of works by Wu Tsang


Jorge Zalszupin, JZ Tea Trolley, 1959. Courtesy: Ulysses de Santi.

LOS ANGELES, CA.- Sean Kelly, Los Angeles is presenting the first exhibition in the third-floor project space. Zalszupin 100, presented in collaboration with Ulysses de Santi, celebrates the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of legendary Brazilian modernist, Jorge Zalszupin. While working as an architect, Zalszupin designed several important buildings and iconic homes in São Paulo, however, it was through his practice and contributions to Modern Design that he became so widely known and venerated. Zalszupin is recognized for creating sophisticated furniture of exceptional quality, incorporating tropical woods and an originality that spanned generations, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest designers of the 20th century. Zalszupin 100, an exhibition two-years in the making, brings together a selection of rare and unique pieces sourced exclusively in Brazil. Featuring works from the late 1950s to early 70s, ... More
 

Daniel Lind Ramos (b. 1953, Loíza, Puerto Rico; lives in Loíza), Figura de Cangrejos, 2018-19. Steel, aluminum, nails, palm tree branches, dried coconuts, branches, palm tree trunks, burlap, machete, leather, ropes, sequin, awning, plastic ropes, fabric, pins, duct tape, and acrylic; 90 × 72 × 82 in. (228.6 × 182.9 × 208.3 cm). Collection Benedicta Badía de Nordenstahl.

CHICAGO, IL.- The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago opened Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today, organized by Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator Carla Acevedo-Yates and on view from November 19, 2022, through April 23, 2023. This major exhibition is a innovate rethinking of “Caribbean art,” focusing on art in the Caribbean diaspora and featuring an intergenerational group of 37 artists who live and work across the Americas and Europe. Challenging conventional ideas about the region, Forecast Form reveals the Caribbean as a place defined not by geography, language, or ethnicity, but by constant exchange, displacement, and movement.  “The exhibition’s focus on diaspora ... More
 

Wu Tsang, Of Whales, 2022, courtesy: the artist, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin; Antenna Space, Shanghai; Cabinet, London © Nicholas Turki.

BERLIN.- The Gropius Bau presents world-renowned artist Wu Tsang’s Of Whales (2022), a large-scale installation accessible free of charge in the institution’s historic atrium. Of Whales is derived from Tsang’s multidisciplinary research around Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick (1851). In the installation – first presented at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) – surreal ocean environments are dynamically regenerated in real time by a virtual reality game engine. A 16-channel score blends horns, saxophone, clarinet and contrabass, unleashing a soundscape that fills the entire space. The musical compositions invite viewers to meditate on their kinship with aquatic species and states of natural flux. As the Gropius Bau’s inaugural Artist in Residence, Wu Tsang was the first artist to move into a studio on-site in 2018. Her exhibition There is no nonviolent way to look at somebody (2019–2020) col ... More


Sargent's Daughters opens the debut New York solo exhibition of artist Rema Ghuloum   Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art now to participate in the Collections Assessment for Preservation program   Contemporary Native American art exhibition opens at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art


Rema Ghuloum, Mirror, 2022, oil and acryla-gouache on canvas, 23 x 17 inches.

NEW YORK, NY.- Sargent’s Daughters is presenting Inviting the Bell, the debut New York solo exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Rema Ghuloum. The phrase “inviting the bell” is a Buddhist chant attributed to Thich Nhat Hanh Het which invites practitioners to call in tranquility and joy, as the sound of the bell itself is an invitation to listen deeply and reflect. For Ghuloum, Inviting the Bell is a means of entering into a meditative relationship with the work. Like the reverberations that emanate from a bell even after the audible tones have faded, this body of work resonates with energy and subtle sensation. The exhibition features a rhythmic array of nine small paintings of identical scale, encouraging prolonged contemplation and intimate engagement with the work. With long looking, the seemingly flat swirls of blues, pinks, yellows, and greens resolve and dissolve from grids to organic forms to deep, prismatic de ... More
 

Objects from the collection of the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art.

GREAT FALLS, MONT.- Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art (The Square) announces that it is one of 56 institutions in the United States selected to participate in the Collections Assessment for Preservation (CAP) program. Early this autumn, on October 4, 2022, Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art was granted participation in the Collections Assessment for Preservation Program (CAP). The application for assessment of the art collection and historical building was written and submitted by the Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, Nicole Maria Evans, who maintains the importance of this process, “to support the museums mission, vision, and values to provide sustainable care of the art collection in perpetuity for the community.” Evans will work collaboratively with museum staff, and the museum’s Acquisitions, Collections, and Exhibitions Committee (ACE), to assist the visiting assessors during their visit ... More
 

Fritz Scholder, Native American, Luiseño, 1937-2005. Bicentennial Indian, from the Kent Bicentennial Portfolio: Spirit of Independence portfolio. Color lithograph on paper, 1974. Gift of the Lorillard Co, 1976.05.12

FORT WAYNE, IN.- The Fort Wayne Museum of Art is presenting “Breathing Life Into History: Contemporary Native American Art from the Collection” from November 19, 2022 - January 22, 2023 in the Museum’s galleries at 311 E. Main Street. Pulling from traditions passed down from generation to generation, contemporary Native American artists, especially in the last quarter century, have produced an impressive body of work in diverse media. Unique in their dual identity, living in the present day but integrating ancient cultural and spiritual ideas, the featured artists’ abilities to either weave their heritage into contemporary contexts through medium and imagery, or continue using traditional methods in a modern world, speaks to their self-expression. Influences seen throughout the works include textiles, nature, rituals and storytelling, ... More




Why it takes two days to move a 500-year-old altarpiece | National Gallery



More News

"Gentle Pulse" by artist Karen Black to be final show of 2022 at Sullivan+Strumpf
MELBOURNE.- For their final show of 2022, Sullivan+Strumpf present a major solo exhibition from Sydney-based artist Karen Black, opening Thursday November 24 and running through to Saturday 17 December 2022. Renowned for her intimate practice encompassing painting, drawing, ceramics, and sculpture, Gentle Pulse, is a stunning new body of work where the full spectrum of human relations is expressed, just as Black’s unique vision of the world is unearthed through her approach to art making. Over many years Black has paid heed to the concept of radical care and in this latest series of works she aims to rethink her artistic practice as something that can be more open, more kind, more soft, more loving. Gentleness – as the show’s title suggests, is an active participant in the exhibition, and can – as Black so expertly demonstrates, be adopted as a transformative philosophy ... More

"Tant Zhong: A Kitchen Blessing" ongoing exhibition at Linseed
SHANGHAI.- LINSEED has launched the outdoor project “Outlook” at the terrace of the gallery to explore the vast potential of various creative media within the perhaps limited framework of art, inviting the audience to immerse themselves in creative scenes with unconstraint concepts and approaches. The first edition of “Outlook” presents the ongoing project “A Kitchen Blessing” by artist Tant Zhong, that opened on November 11, 2022. Initiated before the citywide lockdown of Shanghai in 2022, the project first involved garlic, this lively creature that is so close to daily sustenance and grows in groups, an almost “communal” manner, which carried Zhong’s and our hope that it would bless us in the first year of the gallery’s permanent space, after three years of the pandemic. However, unexpectedly, the garlic that the artist had initially cultivated for the exhibition became an important ... More

The countdown begins to Roundhouse's new creative centre
LONDON.- Roundhouse today announces the opening of a new creative centre, Roundhouse Works, which will be unveiled to the public next spring 2023. Roundhouse Works is the latest addition to Roundhouse's creative campus for young people. Alongside Roundhouse Studios, it will double the capacity of the current site to support 15,000 young people. The new creative centre will help uncover new, diverse creative voices and empower the next generation of young creative entrepreneurs. For over 15 years, Roundhouse has been at the helm of providing creative opportunities, space and mentorship for young people in Camden and beyond to pursue a career in the creative industries. They have worked with tens of thousands of young people, supporting the creative development of many including the likes of Daniel Kaluuya, Little Simz and Jack Rooke. The launch of Roundhouse ... More

"The Deviant" on view at the Galeria Jaqueline Martins, works by Regina Parra
BRUSSELS.- As of November 5th the exhibition "A Desviante" by Regina Parra is on view at the Galeria Jaqueline Martins. The event will continue through to January 14th, 2023. We summon the body to speak. Our ancestral gestures communicate a story of overcoming and resilience in face of the insistence of control. The exhibition The Deviant by Regina Parra promotes the reclaiming of the body and the narratives that surround it. I speak here of a body that is constructed, not biologically given. For many women, the body can be both a territory of identity and empowerment, but also a source of enclosure, often incited by external social factors. Regina Parra was born and raised in Brazil — a country with a misogynistic and sexist culture, where women are executed daily for being women. In addition to the risk to their lives and the physical violence, the psychological violence ... More

George Lois, visionary art director, is dead at 91
NEW YORK, NY.- George Lois, Madison Avenue’s best-known 20th-century art director, who put the counterculture of the 1960s and ’70s into postwar advertising and created stunning covers for Esquire magazine that rebuked American racism and involvement in the Vietnam War, died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 91. His son Luke confirmed the death, which he noted followed the death of Lois’ wife, Rosemary, by two months. He did not specify a cause. Irascible and uncompromising, Lois created witty, irreverent campaigns that shattered the ham-handed advertising conventions that had relied on testimonials and romanticized images. In one campaign, a chimpanzee demonstrated the simplicity of a Xerox machine; in another, former heavyweight champion Joe Louis, who was deep in debt to the IRS, appeared in a brokerage ad asking, “Where were you when I needed you? ... More

A Broadway star celebrates a different kind of opening night
NEW YORK, NY.- The storefront was lit up like a stage. People passed by, bundled up, peering into the action. Inside, a small group of friends sipped bubbly, greeted one another with hugs and air kisses and cheered along to a performance by Broadway performer Jay Armstrong Johnson. The occasion was the celebration of Boo-Kay, a floral-arrangement store. Robbie Fairchild, its owner, who is a former New York City Ballet principal dancer and earned a Tony nomination for his lead performance in “An American in Paris,” said his love for dance and flowers started at a young age. “You could imagine, you have your garden full of fresh flowers and this little boy across the street comes over and cuts them all and gives them to you,” Fairchild said in a phone interview. In 2017, while performing “An American in Paris,” in London, Fairchild’s interest in flowers grew. On his one day off a week, ... More

Exhibition of sculpture by American artist Ann Gillen opens at Polina Berlin Gallery
NEW YORK, NY.- Polina Berlin Gallery is presenting Toward Civic Art, an exhibition of sculpture by American artist Ann Gillen. On view from November 17, 2022 through January 14, 2023 and co-curated by Miles Huston, this marks the artist's first one-person gallery exhibition in twenty years. Over the course of more than five decades, Gillen’s prodigious artistic output has encompassed sculpture, drawing, design, print-making, and book-making. Her process employs material translations, iterative distortions, and scalar transformations similarly found in architectural planning. Concerned with structure, construction, and scalability, her sculpture practice has taken shape in monumental and intimate scales; with works realized in a wide variety of materials.Toward Civic Art investigates the numerous civic projects envisaged and carried out by Gillen throughout her career. Everywhere in Gillen’s work there is ... More

Rowan University's dynamic new photography exhibition debuts
GLASSBORO, NJ.- Rowan University Art Gallery is presenting Multiplicities, a dynamic new group exhibition featuring Naomieh Jovin, Tommy Kha, Wendy Red Star, and Leonard Suryajaya. This exhibition presents photography that through humor, theatrics, and playfulness reframes and fractures conventional, binary perceptions about culture, race, and gender. Multiplicities is on view from November 7 - December 21, 2022. In Multiplicities, each artist explores stereotypes of their own cultural heritage and origins in order to break down misconceptions and shift the narrative of what it means to be who they are as multidimensional Americans. Naomieh Jovin, a first-generation Haitian-American photographer, utilizes appropriated photos from old family albums collaged with her own photographs to illustrate how we carry the experiences of our past and our family’s past in our bodies. Tommy Kha ... More

"Spirit in the Dark" opens Friday at the National Museum of African American History and Culture
WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture opened its latest exhibition, “Spirit in the Dark: Religion in Black Music, Activism, and Popular Culture,” Nov. 18. Through never-before-seen objects from the museum’s permanent collection, alongside rare photographs and stories featured in Ebony and Jet magazines, the exhibition explores ways in which religion is a part of the cultural fabric of the African American experience. “Spirit in the Dark” is on view in the Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts (CAAMA) gallery until November 2023. The exhibition includes photographs of several prominent African Americans, such as Aretha Franklin, Duke Ellington, Marvin Gaye, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, Reverend Ike and Jesse Jackson, examining religion’s impact on their lives and the larger Black ... More


PhotoGalleries

The seduction of beauty

Mehmet Sinan Kuran

Barbara Hepworth

Nan Goldin


Flashback
On a day like today, Belgian painter René Magritte was born
November 21, 1898. René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 - 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced Pop art, minimalist and conceptual art. In this image: René Magritte, La Grande Table. Huile sur toile, 54,3x65,4 cm. Peint vers 1962-63. Estimate: 3-5 M€. Photo: Sotheby’s/ArtDigital Studio.

  
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