798 District Blog

PHILADELPHIA (AP).- The Barnes Foundation is no longer the greatest art collection you’ll never see.

Art aficionados and academics might never stop debating whether Dr. Albert C. Barnes’ jaw-dropping cache should have been uprooted from its cozy confinement in suburban Merion and transplanted to a modernist box on the museum-studded Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

But like it or not, the Barnes’ long, strange trip has reached its final destination. It officially opens to the public Saturday.

“We are beginning a chapter of history at the Barnes where the ‘plain people’ that Dr. Barnes so often talked about will at long last feel these masterpieces are as readily available for their enjoyment and study as anyone in this room,” said Judge Jacqueline Allen, the foundation’s secretary, at a preview of the collection this week.

The Barnes expects 250,000 visitors to see the collection during its first year in Philadelphia, roughly four times more than in its hallowed former home that required months-in-advance reservations. Visitors also will see it better, with discreet lighting to reduce the glare that was a perennial problem in Merion.

Along with the improvements in access and aesthetics comes added space for a restaurant and cafe, a gift shop, classrooms and an auditorium, and more parking than its predecessor.

Folks’ opinions on the new amenities may correspond with their view on whether the move saved or destroyed the celebrated collection of 800 paintings and 1,700 other objects.

“This immense tent behind us is where people will dance on the grave of Albert Barnes,” said Evelyn Yaari of Friends of Barnes Foundation, a citizens group that fought in court for years to prevent the move, as she and a handful of others protested outside the new building. “The very smart people of Philadelphia know a fake when they see one and they know a racket when they see one.”

Opponents said Philadelphia’s political and corporate powerbrokers, hungry to reap the economic spoils and bragging rights to the legendary trove, conspired to orchestrate the undoing of Barnes’ trust, which stated the collection could never be moved. That scenario inspired the scathing 2009 documentary “The Art of the Steal.”

It may look like a museum but officials are quick to point out that the Barnes will remain true to — and expand upon — the educational mission that its creator intended. Opponents say removing the collection from its original context has created a “McBarnes,” despite the efforts to replicate the dizzying floor-to-ceiling arrangements of paintings, furniture and metalwork that underscored Barnes’ eccentric philosophy of art appreciation.

The Barnes Foundation’s saga has been a tumultuous one from the outset thanks to the irascible Barnes himself, a Philadelphia butcher’s son-turned-pharmaceutical baron.

Introduced in the 1910s to then-radical works of Gaugin, Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne by his friend, Ashcan School painter William Glackens, Barnes went on to amass the world’s most comprehensive private collection of French impressionist, post-impressionist and early modern paintings. He also assembled a lesser-known but extraordinary array of African sculpture, Old Master paintings, antique furnishings and Native American pottery and jewelry.

A side exhibit at the new Barnes Foundation — explaining his art philosophy and presenting newspaper clippings and letters — lets visitors get inside Barnes’ head, in a way the former location could not, to understand the rhyme and reason of his collection.

Barnes created his eponymous foundation as a free art school largely for the underprivileged. “I am trying to do the biggest thing for Philadelphia than any one man has ever attempted,” he told an interviewer in 1923.

Shortly afterward, he pulled up the metaphorical drawbridge when the cognoscenti ridiculed an exhibit of his daring collection. He required would-be visitors to make their appeals in writing, and often responded to the high-society types he despised with darkly comical rejection letters he sometimes signed as his dog.

Barnes, who died in a 1951 car crash, left behind a trust that stipulated his collection could never be moved. It took a court fight for Barnes officials to embark on a world tour of the collection in the 1990s. The tour was a success in raising desperately needed funds but the fiscal picture remained grim.

After years of financial struggles, infighting and mismanagement allegations, Barnes Foundation officials in 2002 asked a judge’s permission to move a few miles south to downtown Philadelphia. They said staying in Merion, where hours and visitor numbers were strictly limited by the township, would lead to bankruptcy and the dismantling of the multibillion-dollar collection.

Three charitable foundations promised to help the Barnes raise $150 million upon the relocation’s approval, which happened in 2004.

“It was a long and arduous road but the (end) product is so wonderful,” Allen said.

The legal squabbling continues in Montgomery County Court, largely related to legal fees in the epic case, even as champions of the move attend a week of galas welcoming the Barnes to the neighborhood it shares with the Rodin Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

HONG KONG.- The Hong Kong Heritage Museum of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) will stage the “PICASSO – Masterpieces from Musée National Picasso, Paris” exhibition as one of the highlight cultural events to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The exhibition is jointly presented by the LCSD and the Consulate General of France in Hong Kong and Macau, and jointly organised by the Hong Kong Heritage Museum and the Musée National Picasso, Paris. It will be held from May 19 to July 22 at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum. The exhibition is also one of the highlights of the 20th anniversary of Le French May, of which LCSD is a major partner. An LCSD spokesman said today (March 28), “The LCSD is proud to present this magnificent exhibition in Hong Kong. The exhibition will feature 55 original works by Picasso, covering every phase of Picasso’s prolific career from his Blue, Rose, Primitive and Cubist stages to Neoclassical and Expressionist. “Apart from showcasing masterpieces by the acclaimed artist, the exhibition will also feature some 50 photographs and four documentary films. These materials will greatly enrich visitors’ understanding of Picasso and his art. “This will be the most comprehensive exhibition of Picasso’s works ever held in Hong Kong and we expect the exhibition will be a huge draw for the Hong Kong public and visitors,” the spokesman added. Due to the gallery’s limited capacity and the short exhibition period, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum will extend its opening hours from 10am to 8pm daily with scheduled viewing sessions. The museum will be closed as usual on Tuesdays.

HONG KONG.- Back for its fifth year, ART HK 12 – Hong Kong International Art Fair will take place 17–20 May 2012, preview 16 May, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC). This year ART HK will present 266 galleries representing 38 countries worldwide. ART HK 12, sponsored by Deutsche Bank, is delighted to announce its outstanding exhibitor line-up, showcasing the very best in Contemporary Art from the world’s most important galleries in both Asia and the rest of the world. The Fair is internationally recognised for its encouragement of broad cross-cultural exchange, and remains unique as the only world class art fair to have a 50/50 balance of Asian and Western participation.

ART HK 12 sees the return of ART HK Projects, a feature section which debuted at last year’s event. This exciting and pioneering element to the Fair will incorporate ten installation works, positioned in 100 metre squared spaces throughout the exhibition halls at the HKCEC. Dedicated to presenting large scale sculpture and installation works by leading artists from around the world, ART HK Projects provides visitors the rare opportunity to see works of an institutional scale. For the first time, this year the Fair will also have a dedicated Curator of ART HK Projects, Yuko Hasegawa, Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. Selected projects include Flower, an installation of Yayoi Kusama’s distinctive large scale sculptures presented by Gagosian Gallery. SCAI THE BATHHOUSE from Tokyo presents Tatsuyo Miyajima with HOTO, 2008, a 6 metre high silver-mirrored tower with 3,287 LED digital counters over its surface. Furthermore, The Pace Gallery from Beijing will bring Black Hole, 2010, by Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen, a work which is a used shipping container re-configured and enhanced with neon lights as a signature round cut diamond.

This year, ART HK’s Galleries Section welcomes 182 galleries from 30 different territories, offering outstanding solo and group presentations from around the world. Solo presentations include a series of work by Alghiero Boetti, which will be exhibited by Tornabuoni Art, Paris. Lin & Lin Gallery, Taipei, will present internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Liu Wei. Nature Morte, New Delhi, will show new works by Indian artist Jitish Kallat. New gallery additions include Casa Triangulo from Sao Paulo, presenting work by Brazilian artist Sandra Cinto and Cape Town’s Stevenson Gallery with works by South African photographer Guy Tillim. Further solo presentations include STARKWHITE from Auckland, presenting a solo show by Chinese artist Jin Jiangbo, AANDO FINE ART from Berlin with works by Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa, Nadi Gallery from Indonesia with Indian artist Handiwirman Saputra, Rhona Hoffman from Chicago presenting work by Fred Sandback and New York’s McCaffrey Fine Art with both installations and works on paper by Japanese artist Noriyuki Haraguchi. Shanghai-born painters Yu Youhan and Zhou Gang will be shown in solo exhibitions by ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai, and Galerie Christian Nagel Köln, Cologne, respectively. Amelia Johnson Contemporary from Hong Kong will be presenting site-specific works for the Fair by Australian artist Sally Smart.

ART HK 12 will also see the return of ASIA ONE, a section which was introduced to the Fair in 2011. Dedicated to showcasing the latest developments in Contemporary Art from across Asia, this year the section will show 49 galleries from the region, each exhibiting a solo presentation by an artist of Asian origin. ASIA ONE offers an international platform to Asian artists and their galleries and provides a unique opportunity for visitors to experience a diverse view of the Asian art scene.

Following the success of the section at ART HK 12, ASIA ONE will this year feature dynamic presentations by both emerging and established artists. Extending from the Middle East to Australasia, galleries participating in this vibrant element of the Fair will come from Hong Kong and China, Taiwan, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia, Turkey and the UAE. Etemad Gallery from Tehran will present Iranian artist Mahmoud Bakhshi, with Rest in Peace, 2012, a sculptural installation a work developed specifically for the Fair formed as 16 coffins draped in the Iranian flag. YAVUZ FINE ART, from Singapore, will bring to the Fair internationally acclaimed Thai artist Navin Rawanchaikul, Gajah Gallery presents leading Indonesian artist Masriadi, and JIA ART GALLERY from Taiwan brings abstract works by Taiwan-based Richard Lin. Hong Kong’s Blindspot Gallery will present works by Chinese contemporary photographer Pengyi Jiang, while Richard Koh Fine Art, Singapore, and MORI YU, Kyoto, will both present works from young and dynamic collectives local to their spaces, Vertical Submarine and Paramodel respectively. Additional galleries participating in ASIA ONE this year include Nellie Castan Gallery from Melbourne, Sullivan+Strumpf Fine Art from Sydney, Galerie Ora-Ora and Sin Sin Fine Art from Hong Kong, Y++/ Wada Fine Arts from Beijing, Pi ARTWORKS from Istanbul and Gallery Espace from New Delhi.

The Fair will furthermore see the development of ART FUTURES, showcasing works by emerging artists represented by 35 of the world’s most exciting new galleries. Galleries of up to eight years old and artists under 35 at the time of application were invited to participate. Highlights of ART FUTURES at ART 12 include installations by Juree Kim presented by Gallery EM, Seoul, which are clay houses progressively disintegrating as water is poured over them. New galleries participating in the section this year include Green Art Gallery from Dubai, bringing Kamrooz Aram to the Fair, London’s Herald Street Gallery presenting Hong Kong artist Cary Kwok and Melbourne’s Anna Pappas Gallery with work by Australian artist Michaela Gleave to include a new large scale sculpture, We Are Made of Stardust, 2011. Saamlung Gallery, which opened a space in the centre of Hong Kong in October 2011, is another new addition to the Fair and presents local artist Nadim Abbas, whose 18-metre ‘coral corridor’ installation entitled Marine Lover drew great acclaim for the young artist at ART HK 11. Further new additions include Simon Preston from New York, bringing works by Kara Tanaka, and AIKE-DELLARCO from Shanghai, presenting a showcase by Hong Kong artist Lee Kit. Once again in 2012, the ART FUTURES prize will be awarded to one artist featured in the section. The ART FUTURES Prize 2011 was awarded to Gao Weigang for his solo presentation at Magician Space, Beijing.

LONDON.- A strong selection of works by major South Asian artists, seen for the first time on the market, heads Bonhams annual summer sale of Modern and Contemporary South Asian art on 7th June in New Bond Street, London.

The sale includes works by well-known Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan artists such as M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Avinash Chandra, F.N. Souza , B. Prabha, George Keyt, Sadequain, Jamil Naqsh and A. R. Chughtai sourced from private collections in Europe and the USA.

The highlight of the sale is the serene work by one of India’s foremost modern artists Jehangir Sabavala, Vespers I (£100,000-150,000). Illustrated on the cover of his monograph by Ranjit Hoskote, The Crucible of Painting: The Art of Jehangir Sabavala, Vespers I is one of Sabavala’s most important works, representing a key period of transition in the artist’s oeuvre. It was first exhibited at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay and then at his solo exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute, London.

‘Sabavala had a lifelong fascination with monastic life, and the figures of the monk and the hermit are central to his work. Indeed, he often compared his long, solitary and disciplined hours of work in the studio with a monk’s routine of study, prayer, retreat and meditation,’ says Ranjit Hoskote, an independent curator who was responsible for the Indian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011.

Bonhams has been offering works by F. N Souza for over a decade and are proud to present the important work Still Life with Fish and Bread, estimated to sell for £100,000-150,000 it was exhibited in Souza’s London gallery Gallery One and was published in the book Souza by Edwin Mullins. It comes from a private collection in the West Coast of the USA, where it was part of a larger Modern British Art collection including works by Henry Moore, Elizabeth Frink and Lynn Chadwick.

Another work in the sale by the renowned Indian artist M.F. Husain titled The Blue Lady (£70,000-90,000) is from the private UK collection of Mr. John Hay. The work was acquired from Dhoomimal Gallery, New Delhi in the mid 1950s.

The Blue Lady was presented to Hay’s mother Elizabeth Partridge by her sister as a wedding present in India. Elizabeth Partridge was a foreign correspondent for The News Chronicle and also worked for The Times of India in New Delhi during a time when the country was still adjusting to its newfound independence. Hay tells of his mother’s instant decision to join the South East Asia Command when Lord Louis Mountbatten entered a room filled with young Wrens and announced: “I’m going to

India. Who wants to come?”

Partridge and a number of other journalists were billeted at government sponsored flats in Constitution House where the government could “keep an eye on them”. The painting came into the possession of the Hay family following an encounter that Ms. Partridge’s sister had with the artist. She found Husain painting in the flat of P.N. Sharma, a friend who at the time lived across the hall from where she and her sister were housed. Hay’s aunt discovered the artist at work after coming upon the open door to Sharma’s flat. Inside, kneeling on the floor and painting busily, was M. F. Husain surrounded by a number of half-finished canvasses which covered every surface and hung from every wall. Hay’s aunt expressed her great interest in the work and Husain, in turn, told her that he was “under contract” to produce a number of paintings for the proprietor of the Dhoomimal Art Gallery in Connaught Place.

Having seen how beautiful Husain’s paintings were, Hay’s aunt resolved to purchase one of them as a wedding present for her much-loved sister. The gallery owner told her that Husain called the work “The Blue Lady” and that is forever how it was known within the family.

The auction will also present the largest group of works by Pakistani masters to ever come under the hammer at an international auction. Gulgee’s 1965 work titled Buzkashi (£15,000-25,000), which depicts Afghanistan’s national sport, is one of the highlights of this section. Although better known for his calligraphic compositions, during the 1950s and 60’s Gulgee was the national portrait painter of Pakistan and was commissioned to paint the portraits of many figures of the Islamic world, including the Saudi Royal family.

Works in the sale by Faiza Butt, Khadim Ali and Anwar Saeed represent a contemporary generation of Pakistani artists. International exposure of their work through gallery shows, art fairs and biennales worldwide have allowed voices of young Pakistani artists to be heard in major art centres. Faiza Butt and Anwar Saeed both exhibited in Hanging Fire, Contemporary Art From Pakistan at Asia Society in New York, the catalogue for which featured a work by Faiza Butt on the cover.

Meanwhile, Khadim Ali was selected to show his work in East-West Divan at the 2009 Venice Biennale. These artists have also participated in art fairs such as Art Dubai, The Indian Art Summit and the International Hong Kong Art Fair.

ATLANTA, GA.- The Atlanta Botanical Garden and Marlborough Gallery are presenting a group exhibition entitled Independent Visions: Sculpture in the Garden, featuring works by the artists Magdalena Abakanowicz, Chakaia Booker, Red Grooms, Clement Meadmore, Michele Oka Doner, Beverly Pepper, George Rickey, Kenneth Snelson, and Manolo Valdés. The exhibition will be on view from May through October 2012, and will comprise nineteen sculptures.

This exhibition continues the Garden’s tradition of presenting works by internationally renowned artists in an extraordinary natural setting of thirty acres, including twelve thematic gardens. Past exhibitions have included the work of Dale Chihuly, Henry Moore, and Niki de Saint Phalle. Mary Pat Matheson, the Garden’s executive director states,” The Garden has become the Atlanta venue to see the best in contemporary art.”

These nine artists have each produced significant bodies of work and are renowned internationally for their singular and independent vision. The collective artists’ oeuvre spans the breadth of 20th- and 21st-century sculpture. Dale Lanzone, the exhibition’s curator, said the collection breaks new aesthetic ground while defining new categories of sculptural expression. “The exhibited works, though diverse in character, exemplify the individual artists’ shared commitment to physicality and to the object as their preferred sculptural medium.”

Magdalena Abakanowicz (Polish, b. 1930) The power of Abakanowicz’s art comes from its timeless presence, its ability to invoke deep feeling and the artist’s unique use of figurative forms as the embodiment of a visionary philosophy. Robert Hughes, writing for Time magazine, described Abakanowicz’s work as being a “dark vision of primal myth.” The two cast iron works exhibited, Kain and Abel, are imposing, headless figures that perfectly demonstrate this timelessness.

Chakaia Booker (American, b. 1953) Hailed as the “Queen of Rubber Soul” by independent curator and art critic Lily Wei, Booker uses strips and sections of recycled tires to create her large intricate works. She participated in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, exhibiting the work It’s so Hard to Be Green, which was met with great acclaim. The sculptures Anonymity and Meeting Ends demonstrate the amazing variety in texture and form she creates with this medium and draw upon African influences such as tribal body paint, scarification, and textiles.

Red Grooms (American, b. 1937) Tennessee-born multi-media artist Red Grooms is well-known for his witty commentaries on modern life and his affectionate yet satirical portrayals of urban culture. One of his best-known examples of this is Ruckus Manhattan (1976-77), a dazzling, pithy recreation of New York City. The work is a sprawling sculpto-pictorama, a word coined by the artist to describe a three-dimensional walk-through installation that the viewer could enter to enjoy the scenery and become part of the show. The two sculptures Charleston and Flamenco Dancers are part of a series in which he explored traditional dance forms. The third work, Hot Dog Vendor, embodies what Grooms has called “a sort of comic strip feel for city life” found throughout much of his work. All three sculptures are enamel on aluminum.

Clement Meadmore (Australian, 1929-2005) The combination of Minimalism’s ascendancy in the 1960’s and its uncompromising reductiveness precipitated a crisis of values for Meadmore, prompting him to move beyond Minimalism by establishing a set of variant aesthetic terms to work with and against. Despite superficial similarities with minimalism such as formal clarity, unitary forms, a basis in geometry and smooth, uninflected surfaces, Meadmore’s sculptures express ideas and feelings beyond their factual presence. Unlike the minimalists, Meadmore never began with an idea developed in advance. His compositions were arrived at intuitively. The sculptures Outspread and Wall for Bojangles are both classic examples of a single resolute form expressing both clarity and rigor, while at the same time conveying the complexity, expressiveness and dynamics of classic modernist sculpture.

Michele Oka Doner (American, b. 1945) Fueled by a lifelong study and appreciation of the natural world and exploration of the human figure, Oka Doner works primarily in bronze, as well as clay and the lost wax method, creating wax forms that are later cast in bronze or silver. Oka Doner has completed many public art installations, including A Walk on the Beach at the Miami International Airport, comprised of 8,000 bronze and mother-of-pearl forms depicting sea life and the cosmos throughout a two and half mile-long long concourse of white and dark terrazzo inlaid with bronze and mother-of-pearl. Other installations include Radiant Site at the Herald Square subway station in New York City; Flight at the Ronald Reagan International Airport, Arlington, VA; three United States courthouses in Greeneville, TN; Gulfport, MI and Laredo, TX; and the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia, PA; among others. Her most recent public work is Pearl Crystal Canopy in the shopping center in Doha, Qatar. The canopy cascades over the escalator well, refracting light like a prism and projecting a radiant glow from the one thousand three hundred real baroque pearls encrusting the bottom edge. Oka Doner’s childhood relationship with the sea informs both Primal Self Portrait and Figure with Long Arms; the highly textured surface of the cast bronze simultaneously evokes coral formations and ancient relics.

Beverly Pepper (American, b. 1922) Working from her studio in Italy, Pepper is a pioneer in sculpting monumental abstract works in cast iron, bronze, stainless steel and stone. Robert Hobbs remarked on the timeless nature of Pepper’s forms, “There is always a wondrously fresh quality to her work, which helps to explain why her casts and carvings age so well… They are wrapped in and project their own special aura.” This aura has been equated with “archaic simplification” (Barbara Rose) and with the sacred. This immemorial character is clear in Longo Monolith and Horizontal Twist. She says of her sculptures, “the intrinsic value of my effort in art is to be surprised and renewed by the work as it emerges – hopefully – with one’s past and future comingling in the most unexpected and lyrical forms.”

George Rickey (American, 1907-2002) Whether in columns, clusters, lines or suspended shimmering planes, Rickey’s sculptures capture the expressive moment of the intersection of material form, light and movement in space. As art critic Alexandra Anderson-Spevy in an essay on Rickey’s work stated: “His works mesmerize viewers even when they are still. But these fluid geometric constructions are born to move and they partner best with natural forces. Rickey often declared that he aimed ‘to make things [that are] as contemporary as the weather report,’ And gentle winds and changing weather usually are these sculptures’ greatest friends.” The three large stainless steel sculptures Four Rectangles Oblique II, Three Oblique Lines Conical Path, and Two Lines Vertical will be on view.

Kenneth Snelson (American, b. 1927) Cantilever and Key City exemplify the fundamental element of Snelson’s work: his idea of form bound and defined by structure. He has said, “Structure to me is involved with forces, the stressing of pieces together, the kind of thing you find in a suspension bridge, for example. It is a definition of what is going on to cause that space to exist.” One cannot help but marvel at the elegance of the work’s design when viewing a Snelson sculpture. It is simultaneously both complex and simple, and the power of this duality lends to his sculpture the intellectual tension of rational thought and the poetic imagination of an art distilled through intuition. In an essay A Perspective on the Science and Art of Modeling Atoms the physiologist Robert Root-Bernstein wrote, “It seems a mistake to me to categorize Snelson’s work as one thing or another—as art or science, truth or imagination. Snelson’s work is a new perspective on structures in nature and the nature of structure. This perspective, in turn, makes new things imaginable and therefore new things possible.”

Manolo Valdés (Spanish, b. 1942) Manolo Valdés is considered to be one of the most original and versatile artists working today. For Valdés the history of art is a major source of inspiration. He looks to old masters, such as Zurbarán, Goya, Ribera and Velázquez, as well as the modernists, Picasso and Matisse, for inspiration. However he finds more than just inspiration in the works of these artists; he does not simply copy the work of his artistic forebears but uses their work “as a pretext” (“como pretexto”) to create and entirely new aesthetic object. Yvonne II is part of a series of six monumental bronzes – all over 12 feet in height – depicting female heads, their calm facial composure and structured equilibrium offset rhythmically by dynamic ornamental head-pieces inspired by Matisse and Picasso.

NEW YORK, NY.- Roberto Matta was an influential figure in the New York art world of the early 1940s. Energetic and charismatic, he was able to translate European surrealism to a generation of young American artists in a way that would galvanize them to experiment with its techniques, ultimately encouraging a new phase of American art, Abstract Expressionism. La révolte des contraires of 1943 is a masterful example of Matta’s utilization of thin washes of pigment, undulating lines, and flame-like breakouts of prismatic color to portray a non-Euclidean space he dubbed “inscapes.”

Matta left his native Chile in 1935 and the ensuing years were a time of intense change and artistic development for him. Arriving in Paris, he began to work for the rationalist architect Le Corbusier, but was soon led in a vastly different direction. His new friendships with a series of poets, the Spanish Federico García Lorca and the Chileans Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, inspired him to a greater emotive expression. In 1937 he met Salvador Dalí and André Breton and later that year, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Tanguy, and Joan Miró. By the fall, Matta had joined the Surrealist group and found their method of automatism conducive to the formation of his own particular biomorphic style. Along with his friend, the British surrealist Gordon Onslow Ford, Matta became interested in the writings of the Russian esotericist P.D. Ouspensky. The writings of Ouspensky, along with those of the French mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré, led the artist to explore notions of visual perception and the limitations of three-dimensional space. This would spark in Matta a life-long quest to find the artistic means to portray unseen dimensions, the passage of time, processes of transformation, and other esoteric concepts.

Matta landed in New York City in October of 1939, leaving France soon after it entered into World War II earlier in August. In Paris his work had been championed by Breton who, by praising it publically in the May 1939 issue of the Surrealist journal Minotaure, solidified his reputation as an important member of a younger generation of surrealist artists. Thus, soon after his arrival in New York, the Julien Levy Gallery, known for surrealist exhibitions, invited him to show his paintings in 1940. Matta quickly gained a reputation and had a one-man show in 1942 at the Pierre Matisse Gallery and received much critical acclaim in the press. La révolte des contraires reveals a number of influences on the artist at that time. In 1941 he traveled to Mexico where he became interested in pre-Columbian calendar systems. From 1942-44 he met up frequently with Marcel Duchamp and the two discussed their interests in mathematics and science and in this vein, mathematical models viewed at Columbia University further inspired him. Matta also studied magic, astrology, the tarot, and the occult writings of Eliphas Lévi. In La révolte des contraires Matta creates a cataclysmic space in a perpetual state of flux. Black curvilinear lines on a white ground suggest limitless space, as concentric circles spin, creating vortexes of energy. Flashes of exuberant yellow-green evoke an astral, otherworldly light illuminating the void. Illusionistic space is juxtaposed against opaque planes of black that emphasize the surface, and this vacillation (as the title indicates) creates a tension suggestive of processes of transformation. Simultaneously hermetic and accessible, La révolte des contraires depicts a metaphysical realm where scientific notions of the cosmos meld with the interior, psychological space of the mind.

This work is sold with a certificate of authenticity signed by Germana Matta Ferrari dated June 2004 and is registered in the Matta archives under no. 44/7.

Susan L. Aberth, Associate Professor of Art History, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson

WASHINGTON, DC.- Wood from dismantled temples finds its next incarnation as part of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s massive “Fragments,” on view in the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery May 12–April 7, 2013. “Fragments” explores the role of tradition amidst the reality of living in today’s rapidly changing China.

The work, on view for the first time in the U.S., is part of “Perspectives,” the Sackler’scontemporary art series.

“‘Fragments’ reminds us that our relationship to the past and notions of heritage is fluid and complex” said Carol Huh, associate curator for contemporary art and curator of the “Perspectives” series. “The ironwood began life hundreds of years ago; Ai has brought these disassembled pieces together in a new context, as if defining another stage in the evolution of this ancient material.”

An apparently “irrational structure,” “Fragments” is in fact a delicately balanced network of ironwood pillars and beams realized with the assistance of a team of traditional Chinese carpenters. Drawing on the 2,000-year-old Chinese technique of “post and beam” construction, the installation is held together by an elaborate system of joinery whose seemingly random posts anchor a scale outline of China. Using salvaged materials and reimagining them in a radically different form, Ai highlights the simultaneously destructive and creative process that is constantly transforming the Chinese landscape.

“Perspectives: Ai Weiwei” is presented concurrently with a retrospective of Ai’s works at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. “Zodiac Heads” opened at the Hirshhorn April 19, and will be followed by the exhibition “Ai Weiwei: According to What?” in October 2012, on view through February 2013.

Born in 1957 in Beijing, Ai has become one of the most renowned artists of his time. His practice spans a range of media, from sculpture, installations, video and photography to architecture. Many of his projects are characterized by a collaborative approach and public engagement that express his deep concern for the role of art in Chinese society and the everyday lives of individuals. Ai has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and publications worldwide. During recent years, Ai’s relationship with the Chinese authorities has been contentious. In 2011, he was detained and put under house arrest until June 2012.

PARIS (AP).- Art lovers should expect the unexpected in the latest offering of the ground-breaking and normally roof-scraping Monumenta exhibit, as artist Daniel Buren brings the Grand Palais’ lofty ceiling for the first time — literally — down to earth.

Monumenta, the hugely-mediatized annual art project that’s in its fifth year dares an artist of international stature to “move into” the nave of one of the French capital’s most monumental buildings, and own it.

With a space measuring 13,500 square meters (about 145,000 square feet) and 45 meters (150 feet) high, it’s a dizzying feat for any artist, but especially for Buren.

The man, a national treasure in France, is a minimalist artist.

In a testament to the show’s importance, French President-elect Francois Hollande dropped in Wednesday — a day before the opening to the public — for his first cultural event since winning Sunday’s election.

Last year’s leviathan-shaped gargantua by British artist Anish Kapoor is a hard act to follow, scraping the nave’s ceiling, and attracting more than 270,000 people in six and a half weeks.

But as ever, Buren, who won 2007’s “Praemium Imperiale” award, akin to the Nobel Prize for art, thinks outside the box.

Buren’s attempt sees myriad translucent circles in red, blue, green and yellow installed horizontally like a second human-scale roof, 2.5 meters (eight feet) high, supported by his signature 8-centimeter (three-inch) bars, striped in black and white.

The central part directly underneath the nave is empty, save for 9 circular mirrors on the floor, shining up.

At first look, it seems as if Buren has failed his Monumenta homework — to fill the space.

But think again: what’s the medium that fills not only the Grand Palais, but every interior ever seen?

In a word: light.

“The spirit of this place is sun, is light, which cuts through the color in the circles … You need to feel for the space you’re in … The Grand Palais with the glass ceiling has such beautiful light, all the time — even on a rainy day,” Buren told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Visitors were seen exploring furtively under the rainbow-dappled disks that stand uniformly at 2.5 meters (eight feet) high across the expanse, some in awe and others in confusion.

There was a gasp as the morning’s first ray of sunlight shone through the building’s roof.

“Wow. That’s the moment I only understood it, when the sunlight came through the ceiling and hit the disks and shone of the floor: that’s the beautiful part with colors everywhere, when everything came together perfectly,” said Nina Aelbers, 27.

Others could only describe their reaction to the work in metaphor: one viewer at a loss for words, Roberta Prevost, called the second roof a “shimmering rug or multicolored tapestry.”

Art critic Joost de Geest summed it up best: “Buren’s art is never immediately accessible, visible. You need to stroll around to feel it. The colored circles are very light, joyous, agreeable, but you need to discover them first. Imagine this — you can walk comfortably around the Grand Palais for the first time! I like that it’s on a small scale.”

The small size was intentional.

“I’ve often worked in very different projects, different sizes. Some are empty, some are full, some are deconstructed. Here, again, the fundamental heart of the work was to make the work accessible and personal… I made the ceiling this low, so it would be just about the height of a person, human size. It’s to re-appropriate the building for everyone,” Buren said.

As part of plan to democratize the space, Buren also sealed up the main entrance of the Palais, and in the process visually censored its huge doors and sweeping stairs.

“Oh yes, that’s the first thing I did, when I started thinking how to make this space more personal. I blocked off that entrance that doesn’t work, and it doesn’t need and opened up the smaller side doors at the north and south… I want the volume of air in the Grand Palais to speak by itself. That’s exactly the idea.”

Not everyone, however, was convinced by the installation’s size, and perceived lack of grandeur, such as Jonathan Hoenig, who’d seen last year’s Kapoor exhibit: “When I first saw it was underwhelming. It’s Monumenta — and of course I expected something bigger, more impressive from someone like Buren. Last year, Kapoor really filled the space, he was better.”

It’s not the first time criticism has been fielded at Buren, who has previous examples in his 40-year career of sparsely endowing vast expanses.

His most famous permanent work in situ at Paris’ Palais-Royal, triggered a national outcry in the 1980s during the two years of its creation.

Filling the entire courtyard of the famous 17th century palace, a stone’s throw from the Louvre museum, Buren installed dozens of short black and white columns (again, with his signature stripes), with some standing no taller than stumps.

Critics said Buren had defaced national heritage.

In the ensuing outrage, the fencing around the construction site was covered in graffiti and there were even threats to destroy Buren’s work.

It caused a halt to the project, which was eventually completed in 1986.

Twenty five years on, and the columns have since gone on to become a sort of national treasure, the marble stumps now affectionately called “The Buren Columns.”

Buren reflected on any hiccups in the making of his 2012 work.

“Ah no, we were lucky there were no problems in the making of this installation, so we ran on time!” he admitted, jovially.

Humor is a tool well-suited to weather many a storm in the fickle world of art, as Buren demonstrates well.

When asked for the artistic reasoning behind his narrow choice of colors, journalists chuckled: the company that manufactured them “only had four.”

“Daniel Buren, MONUMENTA 2012″ runs May 10 to June 21 at Paris’ Grand Palais.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

RIEHEN.- Jeff Koons (b. 1955) is one of the best known contemporary artists, whose work has repeatedly caused a furore since the 1980s. He has been especially renowned for works that call the conventional distinction between art and kitsch into question. The Fondation Beyeler is presenting the first Koons exhibition ever held in a Swiss museum.

From the start Koons worked in terms of chronological series of pieces, each with its own title. Taken together, these series titles provide an overview of his artistic conception. The extensive show comprises about 50 works from three central groupings that represent crucial steps in Koons’s development and pursue the unusual path, combining popular and high culture, which the object has taken and is still taking in his oeuvre.

The three series selected together with the artist for exhibition are The New (1980-87), Banality (1988) and Celebration (from 1994).

The exhibition spans a wide arc from The New, the young artist’s early series, to Celebration, to which new pieces are still being added today. In between we find Banality, an influential grouping with a manifesto-like character and crucial for Koons’s self-definition as an artist. Taken together, these three series reflect the core of Koons’s thinking and the internal cohesion of the entire oeuvre, something that tends to be obscured by the system of groups of works with their separate titles.

In The New, which would become determinant for the artist’s development, he purposely focused on factory-new, unused vacuum cleaners and carpet cleaning appliances of the Hoover brand, which, placed over flourescent tubes, are encased in plexiglass cases. In this way, the objects create an impression of cleanliness and seductive value, embodying the ideal of newness. Basic themes of this series are integrity, innocence and purity — values that run through Koons’s oeuvre as a whole. In terms of their stringent arrangement and placement on fluorescent lights, these objects recall Minimal Art.

Yet Koons is also one of the artists who have taken up the discussion on objects launched by Duchamp at the start of the twentieth century with his ready-mades. He has advanced this discussion in an original and masterfully brilliant way.

From The New series, the exhibition presents thirteen works, including a display window installation, reconstructed with the original vacuum cleaners, that was on view in 1980 at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. In this series, the celebration of newness finds expression not only in the vacuum cleaner works but in the programmatic The New Jeff Koons (1980), comprising a lighted box with a black and white photo of the artist as a boy. The young Koons’s self-confidence had already become evident by this time.

The advertising posters Koons employed for his silkscreen prints reflect his special interest in commercial imagery and visual strategies. In combination with the showcase objects, they immediately confront the viewer with the basic message of the series and the artist’s fascination with the manipulative potential of images and their presentation, as well as his intention to make the work of art as accessible to the viewer as possible. As an image on canvas, the lithograph New! New Too! (1983) is an early indicator of Koons’s concern with monumental painting, which would come to fruition years later, in the Celebration series.

The ready-made-like everyday objects in The New metamorphosed in Banality into strange and provocative sculptures in wood, porcelain and mirrored glass, made by traditional crafts methods. Their motifs were taken equally from art history and popular culture, and collaged into innovative figures with a Baroque-oriented aesthetic. With the much-acclaimed Banality series, the artist not only placed the definition of art on a new foundation but advanced to become a star of the international art scene.

The exhibition includes sixteen sculptures and reliefs, a major portion of the series of twenty sculptural figures. The motifs in Banality stem from a wide range of imagery from Renaissance and Baroque art, popular magazines, and the world of toys and postcards.The initial motif is modified such that the figures run through a transformation in terms of change of scale, medium or material which lends them new potentials of interpretation.

The guiding idea behind Banality is the self-acceptance of the viewer conveyed by ostensibly banal things. This idea is embodied in the polychrome, quasi-religious wood sculpture Ushering in Banality (1988), which as it were manifests the banal as Koons’s fundamental ideal.

A further theme of the Banality series is the association between human and animal that characterizes many of the works, for instance Stacked. As a group, the Banality figures add up to an overall image that illustrates Koons’s approach in the form of a veritable program of redemption and his intention to art that is understandable, accessible and edifying for all. Still, his subject matter is less religious in nature than aimed at raising universal, existential questions of human existence. The entire visual program of Banality is based on the concepts of innocence and guilt, and aims through aesthetic means at a forgiveness of sins and a dissolution of the notion of guilt in general. This is reflected in a frequent recourse to saints or figures associated with sacredness, such as the sculpture Buster Keaton consisting of mounted wood. The imposing porcelain sculpture of Michael Jackson and Bubbles, to which the artist refers as a contemporary Pietà, has since become a modern icon. The piece reflects Koons’s ideal of an art that reconciles all oppos-tions to reach as large an audience as possible.

In Banality, the artist’s interest in materials and surfaces acquires an especially symbolic dimension. The aesthetic effect of the material always goes hand in hand with its emotional effect. By means of the material, whether porcelain, wood or chrome steel, Koons appeals to viewers’ emotions and attempts to meet their desires. With the employment of mirrored glass in Christ and the Lamb and Wishing Well, finally, he had recourse to a material — like the chrome steel before — whose reflecting quality draws us directly into the work and, to this extent, compellingly manifests Koons’s basic conception of an accessible art.

The Celebration series represents Koons’s most ambitious series to date, intended to comprise twenty large-scale sculptures in perfectly crafted stainless steel and sixteen large-format paintings. The exhibition includes ten of these paintings. In Celebration, the artist addresses things familiar and transitory, children and childhood, in motifs that call to mind children’s birthdays and holiday customs, yet whose monumental sculptural forms are simultaneously stylized into the iconic. In terms of style, Celebration represents something in the nature of a synthesis between the minimalist aesthetic of The New and the Baroque opulence of Banality, and links up with the involvement with childhood seen in earlier series. Attributes from children’s birthday appear in Party Hat (1995-97) and Cake (1995-97), in the balloon figures Balloon Dog (Red) (1994-2000), Tulips (1995-98), and Moon (Light Pink) (1995-2000). Gift or toy articles form the motif of the brilliant painting Play-Doh (1995-2007) and in Shelter (1996-98). Especially compelling is the monumental sculpture Hanging Heart (Gold/Magenta) (1994-2006), in high-alloy chrome steel. With Cracked Egg (Blue) (1994-2006), a reference to Easter, religious motifs play a role in Celebration as well. While the apparently fragile Celebration figures seem supple and weightless, they are actually stable, hard and weigh tons.

In Celebration, Koons not only developed his sculptural language further but took a step into painting, which appeared for the first time on an equal footing with sculpture in his oeuvre. The paintings in the series are based on arrangements of real objects created by the artist, photographed, and reworked by means of a complex process of schematization, then considerably enlarged and transferred to canvas. The central motif is placed in front of draped, reflecting foil in which certain parts of the object are reflected many times over, usually in distorted form. The aesthetic effect of the paintings, which owe much to Pop Art, is determined by their “objective”, virtually hyper-realistic approach.

Evident in the Celebration series is the mutability of objects in terms of medium that is characteristic of Koons’s art, as well as a spectacular, quite unprecedented interaction between painting and sculpture. In Celebration, the interaction of media — object art, sculpture and painting — comes to full flower in the artist’s oeuvre for the first time.

Two sculptures will be on view in Berower Park at the Fondation Beyeler: in the pond in the northern area of the park, Balloon Flower (Blue) (1995-2000), and in the park’s front area, the monumental floral sculpture Split-Rocker (2000).

The following lenders have contributed materially to the success of the exhibition: Jeff Koons; The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut; The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica; Des Moines Art Center; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; The Rachel and Jean-Pierre Lehmann Collection; Prada Collection, Milan; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; The Sonnabend Collection; Tate / National Galleries of Scotland; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The exhibition is curated by Sam Keller, Director, and Theodora Vischer, Senior Curator at Large, Fondation Beyeler.

LONDON.- Tate announced today that among the highlights of the 2013 programme will be major exhibitions of the work of Roy Lichtenstein, L.S. Lowry, Marc Chagall, Mira Schendel, William Scott, Gary Hume and Paul Klee.

Across the four Tate galleries, some of the most important and best-known painters of the twentieth-century will be presented: Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), a central figure of American Pop Art, at Tate Modern will be the most comprehensive exhibition ever mounted of the work of this artist; L.S. Lowry (1887-1976) at Tate Britain in Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, the first major exhibition in a public institution since the artist’s death in 1976; Marc Chagall (1887-1985) at Tate Liverpool in Chagall: Modern Master, which will bring together some sixty paintings focusing on the artist’s time in Paris before the First World War through to the years he spent in his native Russia around the time of the Revolution in 1917; and William Scott at Tate St Ives in William Scott Centenary , which will mark the centenary of the birth of this distinctive modern British painter.

Also in 2013, the first full-scale survey in the UK of the work of Latin American artist Mira Schendel (1919-1988) will go on show at Tate Modern, realised in partnership with the Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo; and a unique opportunity to view the work of acclaimed North American artist, Ellen Gallagher (b1965), best known for her examination of race and cultural identity. In the autumn of 2013, Tate Modern will also present the first UK exhibition in over a decade of the work of Paul Klee (1879-1940), exploring the intense and inventive work of this renowned painter.

Highlights at Tate Britain include a focused selection of work by Gary Hume (b1962), one of Britain’s most renowned contemporary painters, to be shown at Tate Britain in parallel with a survey of the celebrated British painter Patrick Caulfield (1935-2005), illuminating the comparable work of these two artists from different generations.

At Tate Liverpool, Glam! The Performance of Style will critically re-evaluate the Glam era of 1971 to 1975 in an ambitious and richly extravagant exhibition, tracing the relationship of the era to painting, sculpture, film, performance and installation art in Britain, Europe and North America while a group exhibition at Tate St Ives, Aquatopia: The Imaginary of the Deep will take the visitor on an oceanic voyage through artists’ works featuring scrimshaw, marine artefacts, antique seafarers’ maps and fictional characters of the deep. The show will include work by The Otolith Group, Yves Klein, Carol Bove and Ashley Bickerton.

2013 is also the year which will see the completion of a major refurbishment at TateBritain, when historic and contemporary works from Tate Collection will be unveiled in a full rehang of the BP British Art Displays in new galleries to open to the public in early summer.

Roy Lichtenstein at Tate Modern will be the first full-scale retrospective of this artist in over twenty years. Co-organised by The Art Institute of Chicago and Tate Modern, it will bring together 125 of his most definitive paintings and sculptures and will reassess his enduring legacy. Renowned for his works based on comic strips and advertising imagery, coloured with his signature hand-painted Benday dots, the exhibition will showcase key paintings such as Look Mickey 1961 lent from the National Gallery Art, Washington and his monumental Artist’s Studio series of 1973-4.

At Tate Britain, Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life results from an invitation extended to the distinguished art historians T. J. Clark and Anne M. Wagner to reappraise Lowry for a new, extended audience. Including works by Lowry from Tate Collection and significant loans, the exhibition will re-assess his contribution as part of a wider art history, showing how he engaged fruitfully with the French tradition, and will argue for his achievement as Britain’s pre-eminent painter of the industrial city.

Chagall: Modern Master, organised by Kunsthaus Zurich in collaboration with Tate Liverpool, will be the first major presentation of the Russian artist’s work in theUK for over fifteen years. Chagall’s paintings of Russian village life with its floating figures and animals are instantly familiar. This exhibition will demonstrate his acute awareness of the latest avant-garde artistic developments of the time and show his shift in emphasis from the naïve folkloristic narratives in his early work towards an understanding of how he combined Fauve, Cubist, Expressionist and Suprematist styles while articulating his native Jewish Russian culture.

William Scott Centenary at Tate St Ives is a collaborative touring exhibition which will begin at St Ives in January 2013 before going to Hepworth Wakefield and Ulster Museum, Belfast. Renowned for his distinctive still life motifs, this exhibition will explore Scott’s shift between abstraction and figuration.