Collective Unconscious: Surrealism Exhibit in Moscow

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Giorgio de Chirico - Cavalli in riva al mare, 1928

InArtis project in collaboration with Moscow's State Historical Museum and with support of a concierge club presents the exhibition "The Collective Unconscious: Graphical Surrealism from De Chirico to Magritte". The exhibition starts on the 1st of May.

Modigliani: A Life

Amedeo (“Beloved of God”) Modigliani was considered to be the quintessential bohemian artist, his legend almost as infamous as Van Gogh’s. In Modigliani’s time, his work was seen as an oddity: contemporary with the Cubists but not part of their movement. His work was a link between such portraitists as Whistler, Sargent, and Toulouse-Lautrec and that of the Art Deco painters of the 1920s as well as the nerandw approaches of Gauguin, Cézanne, and Picasso. Jean Cocteau called Modigliani “our aristocrat” and said, “There was something like a curse on this very noble boy. He was beautiful. Alcohol and misfortune took their toll on him.” In [a] major new biography, Meryle Secrest...gives us a fully realized portrait of one of the twentieth century’s master painters and sculptors: his upbringing, a Sephardic Jew from an impoverished but genteel Italian family; his going to Paris to make his fortune; his striking good looks (“How beautiful he was, my god how beautiful,” said one of his models) . . . his training as an artist . . .and his influences, including the Italian Renaissance, particularly the art of Botticelli; Nietzsche’s theories of the artist as Übermensch, divinely endowed, divinely inspired; the monochromatic backgrounds of Van Gogh and Cézanne; the work of the Romanian sculptor Brancusi; and the primitive sculptures of Africa and Oceania with their simplified, masklike triangular faces, elongated silhouettes, puckered lips, low foreheads, and heads on exaggeratedly long necks. We see the ways in which Modigliani’s long-kept-secret illness from tuberculosis (it almost killed him as a young man) affected his work and his attitude toward life ; how consumption caused him to embrace fatalism and idealism, creativity and death; and how he used alcohol and opium with laudanum as an antispasmodic to hide the symptoms of the disease and how, because of it, he came to be seen as a dissolute alcoholic.  Modigliani: A Life comes out today, March 1, on Knopf.  www.randomhouse.com

 

All That is Unseen

Matthew Stone, boy wonder art star of London's underground, is one of the founders of the !WOWOW! art collective.  Stone is a photographer, sculptor, performance artist, curator, writer, optimist and cultural provocateur. One of Stone's performances at the Tate Britain in 2008 attracted over 4000 visitors. According to his website, Stone "is an artist and shaman." And there happens to be a sort of orgiastic, ritualistic shamanism in his photographs, what with the allusions to ceremonial dance, plumes of  thick white smoke and naked abandon.  In fact, Stone is most well known for his nude photographs - the three images above are part of a series called Ritual.  Matthew Stone will be participating in a group show entitled All That Is Unseen at the Nederpelt Gallery in Brooklyn - on view until March 14.  www.alannederpelt.com or visit the artist's website www.matthewstone.co.uk

Warhol's Lovers and More at the Los Angeles Modern Auction

Andy Warhol 'Love,' 1983, Artist Proof 8 of 17

An incredible collection of modern art from the estate of Max Pelevsky, an art collector and venture capitalist who died last year, will be on the auction block at the Los Angeles Modern Auctions. On display will be artists from Picasso to Andy Warhol to Ed Ruscha. Auction:  March 6. Preview Open Now www.lamodern.com

The Art of Norman Lindsay

The Australian artist Norman Lindsay (22 February 1879 – 21 November 1969) was a prolific illustrator, sculptor, writer, editorial cartoonist, scale modeler, and boxer. In his epic lifelong battle with the 'wowsers,' or moral elite, Lindsay kept drawing naughty pictures. At one point his work was even burned after being deemed blasphemous. If you're in Australia you can visit the Norman Lindsay Museum/Gallery in Faulconbridge 7 days a week.

Scott Campbell / Noblesse Oblige

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OHWOW inaugurates its Los Angeles gallery with a solo exhibition of recent work by New York based artist Scott Campbell. In Campbell’s West Coast debut, Noblesse Oblige, he uses copper, currency, graphite, ink, and neon, to transform tattoo subculture iconography into delicate and tempered work.

Campbell expands his use of cut currency, sourcing uncut sheets of dollars directly from the United States Mint, to create large, intricate work with a sunken relief effect. One piece uses $5K worth of currency sheets to create an over two-foot cube, into which a three dimensional skull is carved-out. These works employ the familiar blue-collar vernacular of tattoo flash-boards – a skull smoking a cigarette, a skeleton’s hand in a provocative gesture, a single eye emitting a penetrating ray – and highlight the irony that exists within that imagery.

Noblesse Oblige also includes a suite of prints. Using a tattoo gun, Campbell has engraved a collection of copper plates to make a group of etchings. By using the same plates to compose the separate prints, the artist plays with visual semantics – how meaning changes through arrangement. A series of drawings, executed onto the interior of ostrich eggshells, also flirt with interpretation. Morbid images, rendered in graphite onto these fragile surfaces that represent birth and transformation, point out the delicacy of opposition.

Noblesse Oblige opens on March 19 and runs till April 22, 2011 www-oh-wow.com

Openings: JAMES FRANCO / GUS VAN SANT "Unfinished"

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"Unfinished" features two films, Endless Idaho and My Own Private River, which are collaborations between Gus Van Sant and James Franco. After casting Franco in the award-winning film Milk (2008), Van Sant showed him the dailies and other footage that he had shot many years before for My Own Private Idaho (1991), which starred River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves as street hustlers in Portland, Oregon. Much of this material did not make it into the final cut, and so Franco decided to fashion it into two new films, riffing off the original title. The opening is February 26th at the Gagosian in Beverly Hills and runs till April 9. www.gagosian.com

Artist: Chris Crites

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Chris Crites paints delirious iconography of sin on paper bags - which only adds to the general back alley decadence of his work. When you think of paper bags you think of porn, malt liquor, and your old baloney stained school lunch. Add the hospital in-patient expressions of Christ Crites and you have art. Chris Crites is having a show with artist Richard Basset entitled Cold Comfort at the Jack Fischer Gallery in SF. www.jackfischergallery.com

Hareng Saur: Ensor and Contemporary Art

James Ensor (Oostende, 1860-1949), Skeletons Fighting over a Smoked Herring, 1891, Oil on panel,

The S.M.A.K. and the Museum of Fine Arts are holding a joint exhibition that examines the relationship between James Ensor (1860-1949) and the work of contemporary artists. James Ensor can without any doubt be considered as one on of the ground-breaking artists of the 20th century. The recent retrospective exhibitions of his work in New York (Museum of Modern Art) and Paris (Quai d'Orsay) demonstrate clearly that he is internationally acclaimed as a pioneering artist. His importance in the development of modern art (e.g. Expressionism) is demonstrated by the many visits made by artists (Kandinsky, Nolde, Pechstein et al.) to his home in Ostend during his lifetime....The exhibition Hareng Saur | Ensor and Contemporary Art focuses on the manifold links and associations which can be made between the work of this master and the artistic practices of a wide range of contemporary artists. James Ensor's subjects and attitude are of particular interest at the beginning of the 21st century. Themes such as the mask, the grotesque, social criticism, the self-portrait (and the identification with Christ) and death are all subjects dealt with by many outstanding international contemporary artists. The exhibition reveals some of the connections between different kinds of works and approaches Ensor as a contemporary artist amongst his colleagues and peers. Hareng Saur: Ensor and Contemporary Art is on view until Feb. 27, in Belgium at Gent www.kunstaspekte.de

The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch

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Paul Gauguin, Manao tupapau (The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch), 1892, oil on burlap mounted on canvas

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Paul Gaugin, La Perte du Pucelage (The Loss of Virginity) 1890-91

Washington, DC—Paul Gauguin's (1848–1903) sumptuous, colorful images of Brittany and the islands of the South Seas, some of the most beloved in modern art, are among 100 works by the artist in the first major exhibition of his career in the United States in some 20 years. On view from February 27 through June 5, 2011, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington—the sole U.S. venue—the exhibition Gauguin: Maker of Myth, along with its accompanying catalogue, examines the role that myth-making played in Gauguin's art, shedding new light on his life and career.

Guns For Hire: The Art of James Georgopoulos

“Enforcer” Unique silver gelatin print w/ acrylic polymer and resin on aluminum and wood panel 2010 48 x 84 x 2 inches

“The Manchurian Canidate” Unique silver gelatin print w/acrylic polymer & resin on aluminum & wood panel 2010 48 x 84 X 2 inches

He has worked with NASA, Oliver Stone, and Al Gore - which makes him immediately cool, and next to his resin coated, original photographs of iconic guns used in films, that are subsequently slathered with multiple coats of shiny resin, Los Angeles based artist James Georgopolous is a total badass.  Most of James' photographs have notes that illustrate the history of each firearm.  The gun in the bottom photograph: "[a] .Walther P38 used by Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey in the 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate" and the top photograph: "The weapon pictured here is the actual screen-used gun used by Inspector Harry Callahan's (Clint Eastwood)  ".44 Magnum", Smith & Wesson Model 29 n 6 1/2" barrel." Fucking awesome. James will be exhibiting at the Red Dot Art Fair in New York City this coming March. www.jamesgeorgopoulos.org

Ré Soupault: Artist at the Center of the Avant-Garde

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The Kunsthalle Mannheim is the first museum in the world to be honoring the oeuvre of one of the key female figures in the European avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s with the extensive retrospective Ré Soupault—Künstlerin im Zentrum der Avantgarde (Ré Soupault—Artist at the Center of the Avant-Garde) from February 13 to May 8, 2011. “While in the late 1980s Ré Soupault’s rediscovery as a photographer was considered a sensation, we are now happy to be presenting the entire spectrum of her oeuvre for the first time,” writes Dr. Inge Herold, who is curating the exhibition in collaboration with Manfred Metzner, the trustee of Ré Soupault’s estate. Ré Soupault (1901–1996) was a photographer, fashion designer, journalist, filmmaker, author, and translator at the heart of the most modern art trends in Germany and France. www.kunsthalle-mannheim.eu

Totally Bananas: The Footwear Creations of Kobi Levi

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Kobi Levi's heels are "wearable sculptures" that verge on fetishistic with an ironic, seemingly dadaist, wit. If Roger Vivier, 20th century French fashion designer credited with revolutionizing the stiletto heel, is considered the "Fragonard of the shoe," than you might call Kobi Levi the the "R. Mutt of the shoe." R. Mutt is of course the name signed on Dada artist Marcel Duchamp's iconic and ridiculous 1917 ready-made sculpture entitled "the fountain" - which was simply a found urinal. Is it genius or asinine? Levi, like Duchamp, is certainly making a statement. Levi's pieces are "...humoristic with a unique point of view about footwear." Throughout the history of civilization, women's fashion has taken turns as bondage and liberation.  Levi's constructions might be both, or the handiwork work of a batty sculptor with a foot fetish.  From semi-blatant sexual innuendo to slingshots to banana peels, Levi's shoes are cartoonish, bombastic, and in their magical kitschyness there is a beautiful complex brilliance which makes them insanely cool. www.kobilevidesign.blogspot.com

Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster

Vija Celmins - Man With Gun Vija Celmins - Burning Man

Painter Vija Celmins, born in 1938 in Riga, Latvia, has lived and worked primarily in New York since 1981. She immigrated to the United States at the age of ten with her family, settling in Indiana. After attending the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, Celmins completed her MFA at the UCLA in 1965.

With a palette focused on the gradations between black and gray, Celmins has been known as a painter of refined representational images of night skies, ocean waves and spider webs. But her first subjects were war planes, smoking guns, and other images of death and disaster. In all of her work, the precisely rendered paintings suggest the importance of patience – the artist’s, in making a precisely rendered painting, and ours, in viewing it.

Organized by the Menil Collection and consisting of approximately 20 paintings and two small sculptures, Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster will be the first exhibition to concentrate on a specific time (1964-1966) and subject matter – including violence in America, U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and the news media. While several early images derive from the artist’s own interest in common objects from the studio, such as a television set or a lamp, this exhibition also concentrates on images of war – and televised images of conflict. Celmins’s work from this pivotal time reflects on the moment when the printed image began to give way to the television screen.

This exhibition will travel to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art March 13–June 5, 2011. www.menil.com

Kawa = Flow: The Images of YAMAMOTO MASAO

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Artist Yamamoto Masao describes is work, albeit obscurely and poeticly, with these words: "Kawa = Flow is about the world where we are and the world where we go in the future. Although we seem to be connected continually there is a rupture between us in the present and those that went before us or that come next." "Kawa" means river or more precisely flow.  Masao's photographs are like microscopic imagery of the cellular structure of enlightenment; tiny snapshots of those beautiful moments where everything rushes too close and spills over the edge of the mind into pure ecstasy - and everything is crystal clear, if only for a tenth of a millisecond. Oblivion = Eternity. You can see some of Masao's work at the Maerz Gallery in Leipzig February 26th. www.maerzgallerie.com + www.yamamotomasao.com

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture

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Romaine Brookes "Natalie Barney" 1920

This is the first major museum exhibition to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture. “Hide/Seek” considers such themes as the role of sexual difference in depicting modern America; how artists explored the fluidity of sexuality and gender; how major themes in modern art—especially abstraction—were influenced by social marginalization; and how art reflected society’s evolving and changing attitudes toward sexuality, desire, and romantic attachment. This is the last weekend to view Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the National Portrait Museum in Washinton D.C. www.npg.si.edu

Art and Prostitution: Mark Morrisroe

Art is oft born from tragic circumstances. Mark Morrisroe was born in Boston to a drug-addicted mother and left home at  age 15. Morrisroe would turn to prostitution to support himself. When he was 17 years old, an unsatisfied John shot him in the back, leaving him with a bullet lodged next to his spine for the rest of his life. The experience had a profound influence on Morrisroe's art, which often incorporated images of young prostitutes and X-rays of his injured chest.  Grappling with his identity as a homosexual through photography and performance art, Morrisroe become a seminal figure in the punk scene of Boston during the 1970s and 80s. Mark Morrisroe died in 1980 from complications from AIDS - he was 30 years old. More than twenty years after Mark Morrisroe’s early death, Fotomuseum Winterthur is presenting the first comprehensive survey exhibition on his work. Mark Morrisroe is on view until Feb. 13. www.fotomuseum.ch