Rolla and Marion

Henri Gervex's 1878 painting Rolla was deemed immoral, as it depicted a scene from a poem by Alfred de Musset about a man who goes to bed with a very pricey prostitute, " . . .Marion was expensive. To pay for one night he had spent everything . . .. Rolla peered with a melancholy eye over the rooftops, he saw the sun coming up. He moved to the edge of the window. Rolla glanced back to Marie, she was tired and had fallen asleep again..." Whilst sprawled out and pillaged, Marion lays out on the bed panting, eyes closed, out of breath, satiated.....

Angry Young Men: the Birth of Modernity

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A new exhibition at the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, dedicated to the early work of Picasso, Miró and Dalí, which played a decisive role in the beginning of modern art in Spain, is opening next week. The exhibition concentrates on Picasso’s pre-cubist period 1900 – 1905, whilst Juan Miró’s works of 1915–1920 are presented along with Salvador Dali’s from 1920–1925, both artists painting in the period before the discovery of surrealism. Each artist will be represented by 25 – 30 masterpieces selected to show aspects of the three artists in their earliest periods, works that are rarely shown in mainstream catalogues and exhibitions. For instance, Picasso’s early work was often colored by his strong political convictions. Picasso, Miró, Dalí. Angry Young Men: the Birth of Modernity is showing from March 12 to July 17, 2011. www.palazzostrozzi.com

Carving, Cutting, Breaking

"The things I make are a complex description of simultaneous unmaking and making, deconstructing an object or a body before putting it back together again – this could be interpreted as a violent process, but is often a very delicate and fragile one, a process of transplantation rather than dislocation. The works are an attempt to change the relationship of the object to the body, making visible the invisible, opening up something normally closed, softening a usually hard surface." - Jessica Harrison

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