798 District Blog

According to Butler Director, Dr. Louis Zona, “Ronnie Wood is a most accomplished painter whose work demonstrates a wonderful knowledge of the medium, outstanding technical abilities and an extraordinarily creative mind. The Butler is honored to host the artist’s first major American museum exhibition to showcase this remarkable talent.”

Ronnie Wood was born in Middlesex, England, and is from a musical and artistic family. Before beginning his musical career, he received formal art training at Ealing College of Art in London. As his musical career progressed, Wood continued painting and drawing. Throughout his dual-career he has also depicted the musicians with whom he plays, documented his world tours, and portrayed his recording sessions in vibrant action portraits. He also uses family and close friends, as well as the landscape, as subjects in his art work.

Over the years Wood’s work has been widely exhibited. In 1996, he had a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Sao Paulo, Brazil. He has had numerous solo shows in North and South America, in the Far East, and throughout Europe. Included in this Ronnie Wood exhibition, the first to be held at a US museum of art, are 30 paintings, 22 pen/pencil drawings, and 7 mixed media works. The show was organized by the Butler with assistance from Daniel Crosby and Danny Stern (SPS Lime Light Agency, Los Angeles and San Francisco) and Bernard Pratt (Pratt Studios, London),

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A single-owner sale of more than 400 works, which is estimated to bring more than $10 million, has been scheduled for Saturday, 25 September 2010 in New York. Among the works to be auctioned are examples of early works by many of the leading artists of the late 20th century – Damien Hirst, Gerhard Richter, Felix Gonzalez Torres, Richard Prince, John Currin and Takashi Murakami, as well as examples by artists whose work has become more internationally acclaimed over the last decade – Neo Rauch, Julie Mehretu, Liu Ye and Do Ho Suh.

“We ran a rigorous process to find the right auction house for this distinguished group of works,” said Mr. Bill Gordon, a managing director at Alvarez & Marsal. “Sotheby’s longstanding familiarity with the collections of both Lehman and Neuberger as well as its reputation and experience with corporate collections were important factors in our decision. We are confident that Sotheby’s is the best fit for the Estate’s mission to deliver maximum value to our constituents.”

Mr. Kelly Wright, an advisor to LBHI who is overseeing the evaluation and sale of these works, said “It truly is a visionary collection, and Neuberger Berman’s astute reputation for investment is clearly seen in the selected works for sale. Many of the works were acquired from cutting edge and emergent artists who have since evolved into the vanguards of the contemporary art world.”

Lehman Brothers long history of collecting art can be traced back to Robert Lehman. Works he collected were donated to the Metropolitan Museum and comprise the Lehman Wing. Works from the Lehman Brothers Corporate Collection currently being offered at this auction provide buying opportunities for works of important provenance to both seasoned collectors wishing to supplement an established collection and first-time purchasers. As a result of Lehman Brothers’ 2003 acquisition of Neuberger Berman, the two firms’ collections were integrated.

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In 2005, this humoristic asumption by Evariste Blanchet allowed us to understand that there were different types of comic boods, while suggesting that there was a real need to classify and define contemporary comic book art.

But how can we define contemporary comics art, and is there comic book art created today that cannot be classified as « contemporary » ? One could assume that, as for contemporary art, all comics cannot be called « contemporary » ; the works of an artist painting Montmartre «Poulbots» or « Marines » for an art gallery in Le Touquet can hardly be called contemporary, even if the execution shows genuine virtuosity.

One will point out the fact that contemporary comics have a long history, which has been widely referenced and commented on, and that a number of artists throughout the past decades have challenged the boundaries of the genre : from Gilbert Shelton to Aurélie William-Levaux, Moebius, Philippe Druillet, Chris Ware, Christophe Blain and many others. And creators have to be aware of the fact that they belong to this history, and have to mistreat their medium by multiplicating hybridisations with other artistic specialities to make unknown aspects emerge.

One could conclude that the purpose of an event such as the Le Havre contemporary art biennale is to reference, in a non-exhaustive way, the most convincing of these hybridisations. A word that has to be understood in its latin meaning, « mixed blood ».

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Chengdu is an important city in Chinese Contemporary Art, Which nurtured a lot of famous artists and critics, but the art collection is not so active comparing to Beijing and Shanghai. How to accelerate the development of the Chengdu art market and to increase the number of local collectors, is the question to be deal with.

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World famous sculptor Ju Ming from Taiwan is holding a large-scale solo exhibition at the National Art Museum of China, showing a selection of his Living World Series sculptures that he has created over the past 30 years.

A total of 150 sculptures are on display in four exhibition halls at the museum, revealing the artist’s personal interpretations of the kaleidoscopic human world. The exhibition also provides an insight in part, to the great contemporary sculptor’s lifelong artistic achievements.

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The largest art training center for Chinese painting was set up on Sunday in Tianjin, thanks to the joint efforts of The Ministry of Culture, China National Academy of Painting, and the Tianjin Municipal Government. The facility will ultimately become a giant incubator for developing the talent of creative artists.

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Zhang Huan is one of China’s best-known performance and conceptual artists. He is also known for his shocking and absurd photographs and images. For his solo show at the UCCA, Zhang Huan will exhibit remains of the train which crashed during the 5.12 Earthquake in Sichuan and stretch it over the whole Big Hall exhibition space.

“This exhibition is a way of showing the victims of the Sichuan earthquake that they haven’t been forgotten. It’s a curated social project, an artist and an institution working together to help solve a problem.

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Contemporary ink painting Utopia No. 57 Many ink painters find it hard to depict contemporary life with their traditional tools of rice paper, black soot–based ink and bamboo-handled brushes. To overcome the obstacle, artists young and old are devoting themselves to innovating the ancient art form, both in subject matter and technique.

There is a gradually growing interest in contemporary ink painting both within China and abroad, with the introduction of modern styles as a unique way to celebrate the old art form while acknowledging an ever-changing society and artistic style, according to independent art critic Liu Siyan.

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The ongoing National Peasant Painting Exhibition at the Zhejiang Art Museum in Hangzhou, East China, has caused a stir in art circles. And now, a declaration by the event’s sponsor has aroused even more discussion.

It took two sponsors, the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and China Artists Association, to mount such a large-scale exhibition.

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NEW YORK, June 30, 2010 – It is with great sadness that we note the passing of Wu Guanzhong, a major artistic figure of the twentieth century, who made an enormous contribution to our understanding of art and visual culture. He was 90 years old.

Born in Jiangsu Province, Wu Guanzhong studied art at the National Art School in Hangzhou and in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He returned to China and taught at the Central Academy in Beijing.

His works were condemned during the Cultural Revolution, but later celebrated both in China and internationally. Although he suffered great hardship during his life, he was able to continue to create wondrous artworks, especially in the medium of ink for which he became primarily known both in China and in the West. He and his artwork will never be forgotten.

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