| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Sunday, January 2, 2022 |
| | | An exhibit meant to showcase Kurdish suffering provoked a furor instead | |
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A work in Ahmet Gunestekins solo exhibition, Memory Chamber, in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, Turkey, Nov. 23, 2021. The show, which included works that recalled the suffering of the Kurds and other minorities throughout decades of oppression under Turkish rule, came under furious attack from Turks and Kurds alike, and the government closed it down early a reminder of how toxic the subject of the Kurds remains in Turkey. Ivor Prickett/The New York Times.
by Carlotta Gall
DIYARBAKIR.- Dozens of brightly painted coffins marked with the initials of dead Kurdish civilians were laid out on the upper battlements of an ancient fortress. A wall of street signs bearing the names of other victims and a towering pile of rubber shoes recalled the thousands killed or imprisoned during decades of conflict. The installations formed part of a recent art exhibit in Turkeys largest Kurdish city, Diyarbakir, that the organizers hoped would uplift a region crushed by years of debilitating strife. Instead, the show came under furious attack from Turks and Kurds alike, and the government closed it down early a reminder of how toxic the subject of the Kurds remains in Turkey. As a Kurdish artist, I wanted the audience to see and confront the harsh facts, said Ahmet Gunestekin, the artist at the center of the uproar. I wanted visitors to come face to face with the tragedy of the people of this region. The fighting between Turkish government forces and ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Conservation of the Rimini Altarpiece: view of conversation studio Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung.
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| Exhibition shares a new vision of the history of abstraction through the works of over 100 female artists | | As the Mayor promised millions for new monuments, old ones crumbled | | Exhibition at Kunstmuseum Basel focuses on Cuno Amiet's portraits of children |
Helen Saunders, Canon, c. 1915. Pencil and gouache on paper, 36.8 x 29.8 cm. The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Purchase, The Paul and Miriam Kirkley Fund for Acquisitions and with a donation from Lorna Ferguson and Terry Clark in honor of Richard Born © Estate of Helen Saunders © 2020 courtesy of The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago.
BILBAO.- The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Women in Abstraction, an exhibition sponsored by the BBVA Foundation that shares a new vision of the history of abstraction from its origins to the 1980s through the works of more than 100 female artists that span visual arts, dance, photography, film, and decorative arts. Through a chronological presentation, the exhibition reveals the process of invisibilization that marked the work of these artists and highlights milestones from the history of abstraction, questioning esthetic canons without defining a new one. ... More | |
Margaret Vendryes in front of Green Pastures: The Walls of Jericho, by Richmond Barthe in New York, July 27, 2020. Vincent Tullo/The New York Times.
by Zachary Small
NEW YORK, NY.- Early into his second term, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a $10 million initiative, led by his wife, Chirlane McCray, that would break the bronze ceiling by introducing seven new statues of historical women to New York Citys commemorative landscape of mostly men. It was to be one of de Blasios signature marks on the landscape. Days from the end of his administration, with only $1 million dedicated, none of those sculptures has yet materialized. Instead, de Blasios bigger legacy, set within marble and metal, is likely to be one of disrepair, as many of the citys aging public monuments crumble from longtime neglect, just as they did under many of his predecessors. Dozens of monuments and artworks await repairs and conservation that ... More | |
Cuno Amiet, Greti in rotem Kleid, 1907. Ãl auf Leinwand, 99 x 91 cm.
BASEL.- The Kunstmuseum Basel dedicates a focused exhibition to the Swiss artist Cuno Amiets (18681961) portraits of children. The presentation is occasioned by the Im Obersteg Foundations acquisition of his Study for Two Girl Nudes. One of the most influential Swiss artists working around 1900, Cuno Amiet is amply represented in art collections in Switzerland. The Im Obersteg Foundation, which is housed at the Kunstmuseum Basel, is no exception. In 2020, the existing body of works by Amiet in the collection was enlarged by the addition of the Study for Two Girl Nudes (1910). Some of Amiets pictures of children date from the period of his association with the Expressionist artists group Die Brücke. They show the Swiss artist emulating his German colleagues while also maintaining his creative independence. The Expressionists focus on provocation and the dramatism ... More |
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| Thaddaeus Ropac presents works by Arnulf Rainer displayed in the Austrian Pavilion at the 38th Venice Biennale | | Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung exhibits the Rimini Altarpiece after extensive conservation | | Rarely seen collection of Shikō Munakata's visionary artworks on view for the first time since 1965 |
Arnulf Rainer, The 1978 Venice Biennale, exhibition view, Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg Villa Kast, 2021. Photo: Ulrich Ghezzi. © Arnulf Rainer.
SALZBURG.- The exhibition presents works by Arnulf Rainer that were first shown in 1978, when the artist represented Austria at the 38th Venice Biennale. The selection of 35 works from the Austrian Pavilion features his Self-demonstrations as well as his seminal Hand and Foot Paintings. In his uncompromising search for new means of expression, Rainer developed radical approaches to art, making him one of the most influential artists of the post-war period. The photographic Self-demonstrations form the core of Rainers performative work, which occupies an important position within his oeuvre. In the late 1960s, the artist would frequently take postcard portraits during nightly sessions in the automated photo booth at the Westbahnhof train station in Vienna. Rainer documented his own grimaces and other extreme facial expressions, drawing on dormant or manic reserves ... More | |
Master of the Rimini Altarpiece, Crucifixion altarpiece from Rimini, Southern Natherlands, c. 1430 (Detail). Alabaster, traces of pigment. Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung
FRANKFURT.- It is one of the worlds most important late medieval works of art made of alabaster and a major work in the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung: the Rimini Altarpiece (c. 1430). Following extensive conservation, it is once again on view in the museums outstanding permanent exhibition. Over the past four years, a wide range of conservation and conservation measures have been carried out on the Rimini Altarpiece, primarily a particularly gentle surface cleaning using laser technology as well as gypsum-saturated agar gel compresses. In addition, a comprehensive art-technological examination of the work was carried out. Not only were fundamental insights into the technical construction of the altar gained, but further scientific research by the BRGM (Bureau de Recherches ... More | |
Shikō Munakata, Self-portrait with Hudson River (detail), 1959. Photograph by Nicholas Knight. Courtesy of Japan Society.
NEW YORK, NY.- Japan Society is presenting Shikō Munakata: A Way of Seeing, a new presentation of nearly 100 path-breaking works by the celebrated artist Shikō Munakata (19031975). Primarily known for his powerfully expressive woodblock prints in black on white paper, this exhibition reveals the breadth of Munakatas oeuvre, which spanned from prints to calligraphy, sumi ink paintings, watercolors, lithography, and ceramics and occasionally included a vibrant color palette inspired by the colorful lantern floats in the annual Nebuta Festivals of his native Aomori Prefecture. Organized from Japan Societys rare collectionthe largest Munakata collection in the United Statesthe installation revisits this imaginative twentieth-century artist. A highlight of the installation is the complete Tōkaidō Series (1964), a set of sixty-one printshalf in color and half in black-and-white ... More |
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| Deutsche Bank honors its "Artists of the Year" 2021 with a joint exhibition at Berlin's PalaisPopulaire | | Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza exhibits Italian paintings from the 14th to the 18th centuries | | MASS MoCA announces upcoming 2022 exhibitions |
Conny Maier, Dominieren, 2021. Oil, oil pen, pigments on canvas. Triptych each 300 x 200 cm. Photo: Thomas Bruns © Conny Maier. Courtesy of König Galerie.
BERLIN.- Deutsche Bank honors its three Artists of the Year for 2021Maxwell Alexandre, Conny Maier, and Zhang Xu Zhanand devotes a joint exhibition to them at the PalaisPopulaire from September 15, 2021, to February 7, 2022. Exactly ten years ago, Deutsche Bank launched its Artist of the Year series. On the occasion of this anniversary, and on the recommendation of the advisory curators Victoria Noorthoorn, Hou Hanru, and Udo Kittelmann, the bank is now honoring three artists simultaneously for the first time: Maxwell Alexandre (Brazil), Conny Maier (Germany), and Zhang Xu Zhan (Taiwan). What all three have in common is that they came to contemporary art via unusual paths and bring very specific life experiences, worldviews, and cultural influences with them, says Britta Färber, Chief Curator of Deutsche Banks art program and also responsible for the current exhibition of the thre ... More | |
Fra Angelico. The Virgin of Humility, ca. 1433-1435. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on deposit at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
MADRID.- When the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza opened in 1992 an important and representative selection of nearly 80 works of the Italian and German schools was placed on long-term deposit for display at the Monastery of Pedralbes in Barcelona through an agreement reached between Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and the citys mayor, Pasqual Maragall. In 2004 that group was moved to the Museu Nacional dArt de Catalunya (MNAC) where it continues to be exhibited today. To coincide with the commemoration in 2021 of the centenary of the Barons birth, ten of these works are now being displayed in Madrid where panels and canvases by artists such as Taddeo Gaddi, Giambattista Piazzetta and Giacomo Ceruti can now be seen in the Old Master paintings galleries of the permanent collection. This selection includes Fra Angelicos Virgin of Humility, one of the masterpieces of the Thyssen collection and a work ... More | |
Jessica Jackson Hutchins. Restless Animal Kingdom, 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen. Photo by Peter Kaiser.
NORTH ADAMS, MASS.- MASS MoCA announced its upcoming exhibitions through March 2022, featuring solo shows of work by Lily Cox Richard, Amy Hauft, and Marc Swanson. Cox-Richard and Hauft have been commissioned by MASS MoCA to create ambitious new installations as part of their exhibitions, and both had residencies at the museum earlier this year. General details about each exhibition follow below. Our upcoming visual arts programming reflects MASS MoCAs commitment to supporting artists in the creation of new work by providing them with the spaces, tools, and assistance they need to realize what is often their most ambitious work both in concept and scale, said Denise Markonish, senior curator and director of exhibitions at MASS MoCA and curator of the upcoming solo shows of Lily Cox Richard, Amy Hauft, and Marc Swanson. We are looking forward to welcoming these artists, who have been working with us for years, to present ... More |
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| Jason Dodge presents a single site-specific artwork at MACRO - Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma | | The Centre Pompidou launches its first "Chatbot" | | Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire presents an exhibition of photographs by Edward Burtynsky |
Jason Dodge, Cut a Door in the Wolf (detail). MACRO, 2021. Courtesy the artist and Franco Noero, Turin. Photo: Piercarlo Quecchia, DSL Studio.
ROME.- Cut a Door in the Wolf is an exhibition in the form of a single site-specific artwork by artist Jason Dodge (1969). Exploring systems made up of organic and inorganic matter, Dodge is interested in the stuff that human beings shed day in, day out. Micro- and macro-landscapes made up of the familiar and often discarded things that result from our individual and collective habits are laid out in the space. Their appearance seems to suggest that everything is indeed in everything. Through gestural action, an avoidance of a direct subject, and insistence on the viewers own subjective agency, Dodge investigates the potential of the viewer as producer of meaning. The traces collected by Dodge remind us that our minds and bodies are not separate entities, just as our bodies are not disconnected from other bodies, organisms, systems or things. These familiar, at times marginal, ... More | |
Designed for a younger demographic, the chatbot provides content created by Centre Pompidou experts.
PARIS.- Coinciding with the end-of-year festivities, the Centre Pompidou is providing the public with its first chatbot, a French and English-language conversational agent designed with artificial intelligence to explore the collection of the Musée national dart moderne. Developed with the French start-up Ask Mona, this free innovative tool forms part of the Centre Pompidous digital strategy, which aims to create new channels for mediation and communication to enable the greatest possible number of people to access the resources of the Centre Pompidou. Designed for a younger demographic, accustomed to using smartphones and who do not always wish to be accompanied by a guide during their visits, the chatbot provides content created by Centre Pompidou experts. The chatbot is entertaining and easy to use, enabling the public to discover more than one hundred works in the modern and contemporary ... More | |
Thjorsa River #1, Iceland, 2012 (detail) © Edward Burtynsky, Courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto
CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE.- The photographs being exhibited at the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire are from the series Water and Anthropocene, and are typical examples of the work of Canadian photographer, Edward Burtynsky. He is committed to defending the environment through art. Since his beginnings as a miner, labourer and photographer, his lens has been focused on what he calls Industrial landscapes, or those which bear the scars of human activity (quarries, oil fields, etc.). The second common feature of the sites he photographs is their breathtaking beauty - at least from the air, since aerial photography allows him to capture the sheer wonder of these places. His intention is clear - he creates images using many eye-catching elements (bright colours, abstract-like harmony of forms, use of huge formats where the gaze can be absorbed and, thanks to the high resolution, get lost in the abundance of details) ... More |
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Collection in Focus: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves
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Nottingham Contemporary presents an exhibition set in a possible future version of the city
NOTTINGHAM.- Nottingham Contemporary presents Our Silver City, 2094, an exhibition set in a possible future version of the city. Taking the form of a speculative fiction, it features major new commissions by artists Céline Condorelli, Femke Herregraven, Grace Ndiritu, and novelist Liz Jensen. It was developed using a curatorial methodology by Prem Krishnamurthy. Our Silver City travels to the end of this century, featuring works from the last 400 million years. It is an exhibition-as-sci-fi-novel, or vice-versa. Crossing the gallery threshold, we step into a possible future world. This world has been reshaped by decades of crisis and collapse: resource wars and evacuations, plastic-eating bacteria and flooding. Once known as Nottingham, the Silver City is set against a backdrop of fire seasons and widening waterways. Here, communities have ... More
"Aliza Nisenbaum: Aquà Se Puede (Here You Can)" on view at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
KANSAS CITY, MO.- Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting Aliza Nisenbaum: Aquà Se Puede (Here You Can), the sixth annual Atrium Project exhibition. For nearly a year, New York-based Mexican-American artist Aliza Nisenbaum has been getting to know four individuals connected to Kansas Citys salsa dance and music communities virtually, which informed the three newly commissioned portraits that depict them in their creative environments. Aliza Nisenbaum is known for her brightly-colored paintings and community-based approach to portraiture. Nisenbaum has exhibited her work across the world, working with locals in each cityfrom Immigrant Movement International members in Queens, NY to staff of the Liverpool Alder Hey Childrens Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. The opportunity to connect Nisenbaum with key voices ... More
New book features an homage to Italy and its people, inspired by a personal life story
NEW YORK, NY.- Sonia Lenzi is an Italian photographer and visual artist,who lives and works in Bologna and London. Her artistic practice adopts an interdisciplinary approach and revolves around interrelated themes, concerning identity, memories of people and places, mortality and gender. For herlatest project, Lenzi photographed in the homes of elderly people in Italy.They serve as parentalfigures, who have certain cultural, political and moral values to share. Her attempt to preserve these values for future generations, results into a kind of social family album where places, objects,images and texts related to these people are communicating on their behalf. From the essay by Roberta Valtorta: My father was a politically committed magistrate, who passed on many positive values to me, even though he did not want to take me to live with ... More
Expansive catalogue illuminates the social and cultural roots of Carlos Villa's artwork
OAKLAND, CA.- Carlos Villa has been described as the preeminent Filipino American artista legend in artistic circles for his groundbreaking approaches and his influence on countless artistsbut he remains little known to many fans and scholars of modern and contemporary art. Carlos Villa: Worlds in Collision is the first museum retrospective of his work, presented at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Villa was trained at the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1950s as an abstract expressionist, and over time he transformed his practice to address issues of ethnic and cultural diversity. He concurrently assumed a leadership role in Third World and multicultural international art movements, and his large-scale works reference non-Western traditions, including tattoo, scarification, ritual, and ceremony. ... More
National WWI Museum and Memorial announces major gift from Brad and Libby Bergman Family
KANSAS CITY, MO.- The National WWI Museum and Memorial announced a gift of $1 million from Brad and Libby Bergman to create a dedicated open storage and learning space. When coupled with a new staircase from the main level, these improvements will allow the Museum and Memorial to showcase thousands of objects currently in secure storage and provide the opportunity for visitors to see behind the scenes of museum operations. The initiative supports the Museum and Memorials multi-year strategic plan and provides critical updates that will allow the Museum and Memorial to continue to grow both its collection and its visitorship. The new open study and collections area will be named in honor of the Bergman Family. With approximately 4,000 square feet of storage and a 190-foot coast-line of cases, this space will allow the Museum ... More
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo presents a major survey of the art of Shigeko Kubota
TOKYO.- This exhibition is the first major survey of the art of Shigeko Kubota (19372015) in Japan nearly in three decades. Born in Niigata and educated in Tokyo, Kubota moved to New York in 1964 to join the Fluxus movement. Kubota became internationally known as a pioneering artist for her video sculpture, which integrated video into three-dimensional structures. Her contribution to contemporary art, however, has yet to be adequately evaluated. The goal of the exhibition is to provide an updated and contextualized survey of the Japanese American female artist Shigeko Kubota to international audiences. Shortly after the artists passing in 2015, the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation was established in New York at the bequest of the artist to preserve and further the study of Kubotas life and legacy, in addition to advancing the field of video ... More
Madre Museum presents "Rethinking Nature"
NAPLES.- The acceleration of global warming, the rising of the seas, the mass extinction of species, recent weather anomalies, flows and seepages of toxicity impossible to containthis unfolding predicament cannot be separated from the modern European paradigm that conceives of nature as a reservoir of resources to be freely exploited for profit. Rethinking Nature reveals how contemporary artistic practice is contributing to cultural and political processes that collectively rethink the ethical underpinnings of existence in the world, and underline the forms of interconnectedness that bind the entire planet. Featuring more than 40 artists and collectives from 22 countries, the project articulates experimental creative vocabularies that aim to produce alternative bodies of knowledge and social forms centered on political ecology. They demonstrate ... More
Kathmandu Triennale announces dates and artists for 2022 edition
KATHMANDU.- Kathmandu Triennale is announcing dates for the fourth and upcoming edition, Kathmandu Triennale 2077, which will now take place February 11March 11, 2022 CE. Organised by the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation in Nepal and Siddhartha Arts Foundation, this edition will be the largest and most ambitious artistic project staged in the country to date, becoming a key event for contemporary arts in Nepal even beyond the exhibitions duration. Amidst the rethinking and adaptations brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, the team looks to honour with great care and respect the collective feeling of deep loss, and equally, the paramount hope, sense of community, and imagination that have remained constant in our work and in our lives. 2077 is for the Triennale both a cemented, stagnant time and a fluid, unpredictable ... More
Guangdong Times Museum presents "One song is very much like another, and the boat is always from afar"
GUANGZHOU.- Conventional diaspora studies in the scholarly field have focused on ethnic populations that are displaced voluntarily or by force due to religious or political persecution, economic poverty, or war. At the same time, it has anchored diasporic identities towards a binary of statelessness versus the territorialization of nation-states and homelands. While histories reverberate with their material and symbolic effects, internet communication continues to create slippages between image and meaning as a form of digitized iconoclasm, in turn, shaking our perception of historiography. Global frictions are no longer restricted to contacts and exchanges in the real world, where a multitude of transnational tracks emerged immaterially, and diasporic imaginations can be reproduced along the flow of information. In such a sense, diasporic mentality has ... More
Kapwani Kiwanga's first solo exhibition in Greece on view at State of Concept Athens
ATHENS.- State of Concept Athens is presenting the first solo exhibition of Kapwani Kiwanga in Greece, entitled Deposits. Born in Hamilton, Canada and based in Paris, Kiwanga's practice is research-driven, instigated by marginalised or forgotten histories, and articulated across a range of materials and mediums including sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance. Her research combines her training in anthropology with her interests in history, memory, and mythology. Deposits features a newly commissioned piece together with a selection of works from previous years. The exhibition results from a long dialogue between the artist and the curator of the exhibition iLiana Fokianaki, which first led to Kapwani Kiwanga, New work at Kunstinstituut Melly in September 2020, part of which is travelling to State of Concept, Athens. Through ... More
Alexis Blake wins 2021 Prix de Rome Visual Arts
AMSTERDAM.- Artist Alexis Blake (1981, Pittsburgh, US) received the Prix de Rome Visual Arts 2021, the oldest award in the Netherlands for artists under the age of 40. Blake received this award for her new performance rock to jolt [ ] stagger to ash. The award comes with a 40,000 EUR cash prize and the possibility to participate in a residency programme. For the Prix de Rome, Blake immersed herself in lamentation as an expression of mourning, a topical subject, for the pandemic has caused people to suffer great losses. The artist studied the lament from a feminist perspective as a means of protest. This took her all the way back to antiquity, when the lament was forbidden as a form of art. Silencing is a form of repressionof the voice, but also of the emotions. Blake studied various periods in history, for forms and customs leading ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Le Design Pour Tous
New Galleries of Dutch and Flemish Art
Cassi Namoda
Anke Eilergerhard
Flashback On a day like today, Italian painter Piero di Cosimo was born January 02, 1462. Piero di Cosimo (2 January 1462 - 12 April 1522), also known as Piero di Lorenzo, was a Florentine painter of the Italian Renaissance. He is most famous for the mythological and allegorical subjects he painted in the late Quattrocento. In this image: Piero di Cosimo, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Elizabeth of Hungary, Catherine of Alexandria, Peter, and John the Evangelist with Angels, completed by 1493. Oil and tempera on panel, 203 x 197 cm (79 7/8 x 77 1/2 in.). Museo degli Innocenti, Florence.
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