Marilyn Minter: Paintings from the 80s

Porn Grid (#1-4) 1989 enamel on metal 4 panels, 52 x 64.5 inches overall

Marilyn Minter, who was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1948 gained recognition with her first series of photographs: images of her drug addicted mother. During the 1980s Minter explored pornography and erotica with a style that can be described at pop art.  Marilyn Minter: Paintings from the 80s is on view at Team Gallery until April. 30. www.teamgal.com

[VIDEO] Rodarte: States of Matter

Rodarte: States of Matter, at the MoCA, is the first West Coast solo exhibition of the work of fashion and costume designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte. In this video, Kate and Laura talk about the stories that have inspired their collections and the physical processes their materials go through. This intimate look at more than 20 pieces from Rodarte’s Spring 2010, Fall 2010, and Fall 2008 runway collections, as well as original ballet costumes designed by Kate and Laura Mulleavy from Rodarte for the feature film Black Swan, was directed by Felipe Lima, with original music by No Age. www.moca.org

Miró in London

A Star Caresses the Breast of a Negress (Painting Poem) 1938

Joan Miró's works come to London's Tate Modern in the first major retrospective here for nearly 50 years. Renowned as one of the greatest Surrealist painters, filling his paintings with luxuriant colour, Miró worked in a rich variety of styles. This is a rare opportunity to enjoy more than 150 paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints from moments across the six decades of his extraordinary career. 14 April – 11 September 2011 www.tate.org

 

Lust and Vice

Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller: Danaë och guldregnet. NM 1767

Danaë and the Shower of Gold, Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller, 1786

The exhibition Lust & Vice shows examples of how sexuality, virtue and sin have been depicted in art since the 16th century – from an age when the Church preached that sexual contact was only permitted within wedlock to today’s questioning of who erotic art is created for. A total of 200 works are on show from the museum’s own collections, a mix of paintings, drawings, sculptures and applied art. You can also see a genuine chastity belt! Now on view at the National Gallery in Stockholm 24 March 2011–14 August 2011. www.nationalmuseum.se

The Cult of Beauty

The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900, opening April 2 at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, is the first exhibition to comprehensively explore Aestheticism, an extraordinary artistic movement which sought to escape the ugliness and materialism of the Victorian era by creating a new kind of art and beauty.

The well spring of the 'new art' movements of the late 19th century, Aestheticism is now acknowledged for its revolutionary re-negotiation of the relationships between the artist and society, between the 'fine' and design arts, as well as between art and ethics and art and criticism. Aesthetic sensibilities produced some of the most sophisticated and sensuously beautiful artworks of the Western tradition.

Featuring superb artworks from the traditional high art of painting, to fashionable trends in architecture, interior design, domestic furnishings, art photography and new modes of dress, this exhibition traces Aestheticism's evolution from the artistic concerns of a small circle of avant-garde artists and authors to a broad cultural phenomenon.

The exhibition will feature paintings, furniture, ceramics, metalwork, wallpapers, photographs and costumes, as well as architectural and interior designs. Included will be major paintings by Whistler, Rossetti, Leighton, and Burne-Jones. Architecture and interior design will be represented by the works of Edward Godwin, George Aitchison, Philip Webb and Thomas Jeckyll, among others. Art furnishings designed by these and others, including William Morris, Christopher Dresser, Bruce Talbert, Henry Batley, and Walter Crane will showcase not only the designers and manufacturers they worked for, but also new retailers, such as Liberty's.

The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900 is on view from April 2 to July 7 the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.  www.vam.ac.uk

Robert Crumb: Lines on Paper

Photo by Diane Tell

“R. Crumb: Lines Drawn on Paper” opened on Wednesday, March 23rd at the Society of Illustrators in New York with a special appearance by the revolutionary comic artist himself at the opening party. Curated by BLAB! Magazine founder Monte Beauchamp, the retrospective showcases 90 pieces of the controversial Crumb’s original work from the past four decades. A pioneer of the underground comic movement in the 1960’s, Crumb is notorious for his exaggerated, painstakingly detailed renderings and his penchant for dark, taboo and often salacious subject matter—not to mention his infamous appreciation for the buxom female form (which has garnered him much criticism from feminists). On display at the Society of Illustrators’ two-level gallery are some of Crumb’s original printing plates and a wide array of original prints and drawings, many of which would appear in Zap Comix, The East Village Other, Motor City, Head Comics, Despair and other counterculture comic magazines.  R. Crumb: Lines Drawn on Paper is now on view at the Society of Illustrators, 128 E. 63rd St, New York. www.societyillustrators.org

Text by Annabel Graham

LAST WEEK: WILLIAM E. JONES SHOW IN LOS ANGELES

From Ooga Booga in Los Angeles, where tonight William E. Jones will be signing some of his books: “William E. Jones is an artist and filmmaker who grew up in Ohio and now lives and works in Los Angeles. He has made several amazing films including the feature length documentary Is It Really So Strange? (2004, about L.A.’s Latino Morrissey fans); and many video installations. The blog Amber Waves of Brain is a collection of his writings. He has worked in the adult video industry under the name Hudson Wilcox, and he currently teaches film history at Art Center College of Design under his own name.” This is also the final week of his exhibition in culver city: www.davidkordanskigallery.com

German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse

"From E. L. Kirchner to Max Beckmann, artists associated with German Expressionism in the early decades of the twentieth century took up printmaking with a collective dedication and fervor virtually unparalleled in the history of art. The woodcut, with its coarse gouges and jagged lines, is known as the preeminent Expressionist medium, but the Expressionists also revolutionized the mediums of etching and lithography to alternately vibrant and stark effect."  A, exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse, explores this incredible epoch in German art history with holdings from the museum's own holdings of expressionist prints. "The graphic impulse is traced from the formation of the Brücke artists group in 1905, through the war years of the 1910s, and extending into the 1920s, when individual artists continued to produce compelling work even as the movement was winding down." The exhibit runs from March 27 to June 11. www.moma.org

Openings: Artist, Syd Barret, Man of Letters, Acid Casualty?

Despite what you've heard about Syd Barret if you bet against your life it was all true you would certainly lose. If you asked Syd Barret why he was famous he probably couldn't answer you - despite the fact that he was the founding member of the legendary band Pink Floyd. But who is the real Syd Barret? If you asked Syd, who is now dead, he would certainly say artist before musician. A new show opens today at the Idea Gallery in London that explores the enigmatic inner life of Syd Barret. For the first time, the largest collection of unseen photographs, personal love letters and original artworks will go on display offering an unprecedented insight into the inspired life of this rock legend. gallery.ideageneration.co.uk

Painting the King

Ouyang Chun - Painting The King is the first institutional one-man show to present the artist, who was born in Beijing in 1974, outside of China. His cycle (Wang/King) consists of thirty paintings, some of which are more than five metres long. It relates episodes from the life of a king in a breathtakingly painterly diversity, telling about his victories and defeats, about love and death. The pictures, which are partly crowded with figures and rendered in minute detail and partly feature an expressive and impasto brushwork, amalgamate history and fiction, as well as the search for beauty and the description of moral failure.  Painting The King is on view until June 12 2011 at the Augarten Contemporary at the Gustinus Ambrosi Museum in Vienne. www.belvedere.at

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

Angry_Young_Men_the_Birth_of_Modernity_dali_salvador_the_bleeding_roses

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