Portrait of Ivan Klioune (1913) by Kazimir Malevich, via The Guardian

Currently on view at Tate Modern is a ground-breaking exhibition celebrating the centenary of the Futurist Movement.  Launched in 1909 by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti with the publication of the Manifesto of Futurism on the front page of the Paris newspaper Le Figaro, the Futurist Movement borrowed elements from Cubism and Divisionism in order to create a new style that broke free from tradition and expressed the energy and dynamism of modern life.

The exhibition highlights the work of key Futurists such a Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini as well as works by other major artists such as Braque, Malevich and Duchamp.

New Worlds: Futurism at Tate Modern [The Guardian]
Review: Futurism Falls Flat at Tate Modern [The Guardian]
Closet Thinker: Fashion goes back to the Futurists [The Telegraph]
Celebrating Futurism at the Tate Modern [Fadwebsite]
Futurism at the Tate Modern: A Glimpse into Tomorrow’s Whirl [The Telegraph]
Tate Modern: Futurism [The Art Newspaper]
Tate Modern Marks Futurism Centenary with new show [Reuters]
Tate Modern Show brings pivotal Futurist art works together for first time [This is London]
Tate Modern Presents Today First Large-Scale Showing of Futurism in Britain in Thirty Years [Artdaily]
The Futurists’ Futile Chase After Motion [NY Times]
‘Futurism’ at Tate Modern [FT]
Secret Bansky Show Opens Tomorrow [Artinfo]
Bansky back in Bristol for biggest British Exhibition [The Telegraph]

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A view of the Cy Twombly retrospective at MUMOK.

A retrospective of Cy Twombly’s work is currently showing, for the first time in Austria, at Museum Moderner Kunst [MUMOK].  On view until October 11, the exhibition includes 200 pieces, ranging in medium from photography to painting, sculpture to drawing, as well as graphic works.  The exhibition, curated by Achim Hochdorfer, features works drawn mostly from private holdings.

Related links:
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Cy Twombly
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MUMOK: Cy Twombly
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First Retrospective for Cy Twombly in Austria at Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna [Artdaily]
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Cy Twombly – Sensations of the Moment – Restrospective [FineArtPublicity]
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Cy Twombly’s Masterpieces Inaugurate Abbott Galleries for Special Exhibitions [FAD]
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Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK) opens First Retrospective for Cy Twombly in Austria [Art Knowledge News]

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Damien Hirst’s Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain, currently showing at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Show. via Pinchuk Art Centre.

The Royal Academy of Arts, in collaboration with the BBC, has opened its 241st summer exhibition, showing until August 16.  The show is coordinated by Royal Academicians Ann Christopher, Eileen Cooper, and Will Alsop, and sponsored by Insight Investment.  The Summer Exhibition seeks to encompass a range of works, in all media, by both well-known and emerging artists.  Included are works of photography, sculpture and architecture, printmaking, film, and painting.  This year’s theme, “Making Space,” reflects the inclusive spirit of the exhibition, which the Times has called “the art world’s annual jumble sale.”

Related links:
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Summer Exhibition [Royal Academy of Arts]
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Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2009 at Burlington House W1 [Times Online]
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Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2009, review [The Telegraph]
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RA Summer Show [The Guardian UK]

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Corrida In Ronda No. 5, by Eric Fischl. Courtesy of the artist.

The Jablonka Galerie’s current exhibition features paintings by Eric Fischl. The show is comprised of new works by the artist which are centered around a particular type of bull-fighting.  The so-called Corrida paintings are showing through July 15.The series focuses on the Corrida goyesca de Ronda, the tradition of the bull fight in the Andalusian city of Ronda. Since its inception in 1954 with founder Antonio Ordoñez, the Corrida fills the city every year with color.  Fischl has captured this celebration in his paintings, which will be hosted by galleries in New York and in Málagua following their current showing at the Jablonka Galerie in Berlin.

A view of the Eric Fischl exhibition at Jablonka Gallerie.

Related links:
Eric Fischl at Jablonka Galerie (pdf)
Eric Fischl [artist homepage]
Jablonka Galerie

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Gary Hume, ‘Two Girls,’ (2009).  Via Artnet.

Currently showing at Matthew Marks Gallery are 13 paintings by British artist Gary Hume.  Known for emerging onto the London art scene in the 1990’s with his ‘door paintings,’  Hume’s latest work evokes the rural environment of his studio space; an old barn in the Catskills of upstate New York, where all pieces were completed.  While representational paintings of hospital doors were found in Hume’s earlier work, his current show includes barn doors, along with images of blackbirds, roses and daisies, “all things he sees from his window.”

Related Links:
Gary Hume: Yard Work [Matthew Marks]
Gary Hume at Modern Art, Oxford [ArtObserved]
Art: In Living Color [VOGUE]
Profit and Gloss [Guardian]
Gary Hume Interview [White Cube]

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Installation view of Jonathan Meese’s ‘Arch-State of Atlantisis’ via Jan Bauer

The Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck is host to Jonathan Meese’s first major retrospective since Hamburg’s Deichtorhallen presented his works in 2006.  The show features nearly all of the artist’s sculptural work together for the first time, a number of large paintings, and sound and film installations. At the opening of the exhibition, Meese gave a performance, proclaiming the Arch-State of Atlantisis on the banks of the Rhine.  Meese takes up the mantle of Joseph Beuys, who used Atlantis as a symbol of the loss of natural spirituality. Beuys’s work touching on Atlantis, including his film trilogy ‘Atlantis,’ is represented in the exhibition, as well as work that came out of the Atlantis-Project of Helga and Hans-Jürgen Müller. Curated by Daniel Schreiber, the exhibition places Meese’s work in dialogue with that of Beuys and the Atlantis-Project. The exhibition is aimed at presenting “a world formula” that Meese claims will lead humanity towards the “dictatorship of art,” a utopic future that is a foundational strain in his work.

Arp Museum
Jonathan Meese: Erzstaat Atlantisis [Jan Bauer]
Jonathan Meese and his Ore State of Atlantisis [Goethe Institute]
Arts.21: Jonathan Meese – Arch-State of Atlantisis [Deutsche Welle]

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A line in  Scotland (1981) by Richard Long, via The Guardian

Currently on view at the Tate Britain is “Richard Long: Heaven and Earth.” This major exhibition is the artist’s first survey in London in eighteen years providing a venue on which to better understand the artist’s portrayal of the relationship between art and landscape. The exhibition features sculptures, large-scale mud wall works, and new photographic and text works which document his walks around the world.

Richard Long: Heaven and Earth [Exhibition Page]
Richard Long: Heaven and Earth at Tate Britain, review [GuardianUK]
Richard Long Retrospective at Tate Britain [Times Online]
Richard Long takes art for a walk at Tate Britain [The GuardianUK]
Richard Long at Tate Britain [Financial Times]
Art of the outdoors goes on show at the Tate [The GuardianUK]
A Hymn of Love to the Earth [The GuardianUK]
Take a Walk on the tame side with Richard Long [This is London]

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Installation view of Aleksandra Mir’s ‘Triumph’ via The Curated Object

‘Triumph’ at the Shirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt is Aleksandra Mir’s first solo show in Germany.  Inspired by a friend who had been a famous athlete in his youth and kept mementos of his achievements, Mir placed an ad in the local newspaper in Palermo, Italy, where she lives, asking for old sports trophies. Within a few months, Mir collected 2,529 trophies and had them cleaned and archived. In the exhibition, the trophies are displayed individually and in groups on plinths and the floor, or piled on top of each other like detritus. Mir explores the power of the trophy, both a coveted symbol of accomplishment and a garish, mass-produced item of little value.

Aleksandra Mir: Triumph
Shirn Kunstalle
Aleksandra Mir: Triumph [The Art Newspaper]
Venice Biennale 2009: interview with Aleksandra Mir [adgblog]

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A look at the sculptures of Alberto Giacometti, featured in an exhibition at Fondation Beyeler.

The summer exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler, showing from May 30th until October 11, features 150 sculptures by the late Alberto Giacometti.   The exhibit is comprised of sculptures, drawings, paintings and more, drawn from museums, family holdings, and private collections.  Also displayed are works by Giacometti’s father, the painter Giovanni Giacometti; his brother Diego, a sculptor; and his uncle Augusto, who worked in paint and mosaics.

Related links:
Fondation Beyeler – Giacometti
Giacometti/Fondation Beyeler [Vernissage TV]
Fondation Beyeler Opens Exhibition Including Works by Alberto Giacometti and His Family [Artdaily]
Alberto Giacometti Biography [artDirectory]
Biography of Augusto Giacometti [Rai International online]
Art in Review: Alberto Giacometti [New York Times]

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In Ink Line, part of a new Charles Ray exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery, ink falls in a continuous line to the floor. Via 16miles.

Until June 27, the Matthew Marks gallery is home to an exhibition of three early works by Charles Ray.  Featured are Ink Line, Moving Wire, and Spinning Spot, constructed in 1987-88.  This exhibition is the first in which Ink Line is shown publicly, while Moving Wire and Spinning Spot are showing for the first time in over two decades.

Related links:
Charles Ray [ArtCat]
Charles Ray [Art + Culture]
Dude, You’ve Gotta See This [New York Magazine]
The Uncomfortably Great Charles Ray Show at Matthew Marks [The Village Voice: Bones]
Charles Ray at Matthew Marks Gallery [Art Observed, 2007]

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Jenny Holzer, at Between Bridges.

Fresh off the Whitney Museum of American Art, Jenny Holzer is currently showing at London’s Between Bridges.   The exhibition features two collections of work by Jenny Holzer: “Truisms” and Essays.”  As their names suggest, the series are text-based, so that the exhibition consists of blocs of text mounted on the walls of the gallery.

Related links:
Jenny Holzer [Between Bridges]
Jenny Holzer [the centre of attention]
Jenny Holzer. Biography [Art:21]
Jenny Holzer’s ‘PROTECT PROTECT’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art [Art Observed]

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Paul McCarthy,  M, at Hauser & Wirth.

A collection of works by Paul McCarthy is showing at Hauser & Wirth Zürich. The exhibition looks to showcase the “raucous, exuberant mayhem” that, for McCarthy, is art and society. In some pieces, this agenda is overt, with sculptures featuring George Bush together with pigs.  McCarthy comments on America, here, and the audience; “I’ve always been interested in the audience being a prop,” he has said.

Related links:
Paul McCarthy [Hauser & Wirth]
Paul McCarthy Interview [BOMB magazine]

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Yayoi Kusama, Installation View via Gagosian Gallery

To celebrate Yayoi Kusama’s eightieth year, Gagosian’s Gallery is exhibiting some of her recent works at their West 24th Street location until June 27, 2009.  Although the show features only Kusama’s latest works, it can be considered as a retrospective: Kusama has been exploring the same themes and forms in her artistic production since the late 1950s, with her paintings, collages, sculptures and environmental works all sharing an obsession with repetition, pattern and accumulation.  Gagosian’s exhibit of Kusama’s work reveals how the production of this eccentric and elusive artist is not exactly Abstract-Expressionist, Minimalist, psychedelic or Pop, yet shares characteristics with all of these movements.

Related Links:
Yayoi Kusama Exhibition Page [Gagosian]
Yayoi Kusama Artist’s Page [Gagosian]
The Kusama Myth [ArtNet]
Yayoi Kusama by Grady Turner [Bomb]
Yayoi Kusama’s Myspace

Yayoi Kusama, “Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity” installation view (2009) via Gagosian Gallery

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Diane Arbus, “Identical Twins” (1962) via Fine Art Photography Masters

From May 9 to August 31, Cardiff’s National Museum’s main exhibit will reveal the work of legendary New York photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971).  The retrospective exhibit is comprised of 69 black and white photographs, including the rare portfolio of ten vintage prints, “Box of Ten,” which Arbus began assembling in 1969.  This limited edition portfolio, which was intended to present her work as an artist, constitutes a conscious statement of what she stood for and how she regarded her own photography.  Arbus’ photography, marrying the conventions of 19th century portraiture with the seamy concerns of the 1960s, remains startling today.

Related links:
Diane Arbus at the National Museum Cardiff [Financial Times]
Diane Arbus Exhibition Page [National Museum Wales]
Exhibition Preview: Diane Arbus, Cardiff [Guardian UK]
Diane Arbus: a Flash of Familiarity [Telegraph]
Exhibition of Legendary Photographer Diane Arbus’ Work to be Displayed at National Museum Cardiff [Art Daily]

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Nigel Cooke, “Experience” (2009) via Andrea Rosen Gallery

Andrea Rosen Gallery is presenting a group of recent works by British artist Nigel Cooke.  The show, which features a combination of large canvases, miniatures, and small sculptures, is Cooke’s third solo exhibition at the gallery, and will run until June 13, 2009.  Combining painting conventions of the past with the illustrative styles of street art and children’s books, Nigel Cooke has a growing reputation for his obsessively detailed fictional scenes set against unsettling landscapes.  His later work focuses more closely on the single, isolated figure, seemingly caught in the nightmarish, highly disturbing version of a fairytale.

Related links:
Nigel Cooke Exhibition Page [Andrea Rosen]
Nigel Cooke Biography [Andrea Rosen]
Artist’s Page [Art Observed]
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Untitled (Four Single Men with Interchangeable Backgrounds Looking to the Right) (1977) by Richard Prince, via The Met

Currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is “The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984.” It is the first major museum exhibition devoted entirely to the “Pictures Generation,” a close-knit group of artists concentrating on the self-reflexive and critical principles of Minimal and Conceptual Art.  The exhibition explores how images shape perceptions of ourselves and the world and features 160 works made in all media by thirty artists including Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Louise Lawler, Laurie Simmons and David Salle.

The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984 [Exhibition Page]
The Original Artistic Recyclers [Wall Street Journal]
The Pictures Generation [The New Yorker]
At the Met, Baby Boomers Leap Onstage [NewYorkTimes]
Framing the Message of a Generation [NewYorkTimes]
The Pictures Generation: A Conversation with Douglas Eckund [Art in America]
Preview the Met’s Fab New Show, “The Pictures Generation” [The Washington Post ]

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PTG.75 (2007) by Eric and Heather ChanSchatz, via Saatchi

Currently on display at the Saatchi Gallery is “Abstract America: New Painting and Sculpture.” Saatchi presents the work of more than 30 artists, mostly from New York and Los Angeles many of which have never been previously shown in the United Kingdom. The exhibition highlights the ambition and breadth of new ideas being explored by American artists such as Francesco DiMattio and Gedi Sibony, Aaron Young and Agathe Snow from New York, Guerra de la Paz from Miami, and Mark Grotjahn and Sterling Ruby from Los Angeles.

Exhibition Page [Saatchi]
Saatchi Gallery’s Abstract American Show [The TimesUK]
Saatchi Shows Young American Artists [Artinfo]
Never mind the Pollocks: The New Generation of American Art [The Indpendent]
“Abstract America” at Saatchi Gallery [FT]
America Abstracted in London’s Saatchi Gallery [The Guardian]
Abstract America: New Painting and Sculpture on View at the Saatchi Gallery [Artdaily]

Greeting Card 10a (2007) by Aaron Young, via Saatchi

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A piece from Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts, via ArtInfo.

A year after Robert Rauschenberg’s death on May 12, 2008, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice is showing a lesser-known collection of the late artist.  Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts comprises forty works of metal. Gluts presents pieces actually glutted from the Gulf Iron and Metal Junkyard in Fort Myers, Florida, near the artist’s home.  Constructed of metal culled from old traffic signs and automobiles, awnings and exhaust pipes, these pieces, Rauschenberg has said, are “souvenirs without nostalgia.”  The collection confronts its viewers with possibilites: what metal can become in the face of consumerism and greed, which Rauschenberg has called “rampant.”

Related links:
Overview: Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts [The Peggy Guggenheim Collection]
Guggenheim in Venice Celebrates the Memory of Robert Rauschenberg with Exhibition [Artdaily]
Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents Robert Rauschenberg [Artipedia]
Robert Rauschenberg Has Died At Age 82 [Art Observed]
Guggenheim Museum Honors Late Artist Robert Rauschenberg [the Guggenheim]
Robert Rauschenberg: The Wild and Crazy Guy [Time]

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Alice Neel’s ‘Hartley’ via David Zwirner

Running concurrently at David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea and Zwirner & Wirth on the Upper East Side are two shows surveying the work of painter Alice Neel. Known best as a portraitist during a time when figuration fell into disdain and obsolescence, Neel is considered one of the twentieth century’s most important American painters. While Neel gained critical acclaim by the end of her life (she died in 1984), recent years have seen increased interest in Neel’s work as contemporary figurative painters such as Lucien Freud and Elizabeth Peyton have attracted both record prices and museum retrospectives.  MZwirner & Wirth’s ‘Nudes of the 1930s’ covers the beginning of Neel’s career with sketches, watercolors, and oil paintings of desexualized nudes, including many of women with imperfect bodies. ‘Selected Works’ at David Zwirner presents a wider, more mature range of work.

The Estate of Alice Neel
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David Zwirner
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Zwirner & Wirth
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Decades of Painter Alice Neel in a Single Sweep [New YorkMagazine]
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Art in Review [NY Times]
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Overview: Alice Neel: Selected Works [Artinfo]

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Suzanne Valadon, “La Chambre Bleue” (The Blue Room) (1932) via Centre Pompidou

For an entire year (May 27, 2009 to May 24, 2010), Paris’ Pompidou Center is dedicating the space its reserves for the Museum’s permanent collection to the work of female artists, effectively re-transcribing the history of art since the beginning of the twentieth century from a gendered perspective.  The exhibit, which spans 6,000 square meters, presents over 500 works by 200 artists.  These works are drawn entirely from the museum’s own permanent collection of modern and contemporary art, the largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world.  Following “Big Bang” in 2005 and “Mouvement des Images” in 2006-7, this is the third time in recent years that the Centre Pompidou chooses to display its collection in an original way.  It is also considered the most polemic, with critics either applauding this marked gesture of support to women artists or disapproving of its segregation.

Related Links:
Elles@centrepompidou [Pompidou Center]
Centre Pompidou Dedicates Exhibition to Women: elles@centrepompidou [Art Daily]
At Paris’ Pompidou Center, the Year of the Women [LA Times]
Pompidou Gets Set to Become Women’s Only Institution [Art Review]

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Sigmar Polke ‘Lens Paintings’ via Michael Werner

Michael Werner Gallery on the Upper East Side is currently presenting artist Sigmar Polke’s:’Lens Paintings’.  The exhibition features new works by Polke.  Sigmar Polke’s career spans 40 years of radical innovation in painting.  Each of the twenty six paintings on display is one of a kind.  The conceptual frame work of these paintings is grounded in theories set forth by Johann Zahn in his 1685 book, ‘Telescope’.  According to Zahn, every luminous object in the universe varies in appearance depending on the viewers position.  This theme is reflected through the various interpretations of each of the images in this show.

Art in Review – Sigmar Polke [New York Times]
Overview-Solo show: Sigmar Polke [Artfacts]
Lens Crafter: Critic’s Notebook [The New Yorker]
Michael Werner Gallery Exhibitions [Michael Werner]

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Tracey Emin’s ‘Angel’ via White Cube

Tracey Emin opened her first solo show in London in four years at White Cube Mason’s Yard, ‘Those who suffer Love.’ The exhibition coincides with the release of her book ‘One Thousand Drawings,’ published by Rizzoli, and is primarily composed of drawings. The centerpiece of the show is a short animation piece of a woman masturbating. Emin, L’Enfant terrible and one of the Young British Artists – a group notorious for both its regard to art and personal behavior – is well known for radical, very personal exposés of her sexuality. Emin explains, ‘The title for my show is self-explanatory: love rarely comes easily and if it does, it usually goes quite quickly. And there is death, and loss, which at some point in our lives we all have to deal with. I’m constantly fighting with the notion of love and passion. Love, sex, lust – in my heart and mind there is always some battle, some kind of conflict.’

Tracey Emin: Those who suffer Love [White Cube Gallery]
Sex craze fading fast, says Tracey Emin at London exhibition launch [GuardianUK]
Tracey Emin London Show Explores Solitary Pursuit of Lust [Bloomberg]
Tracey Emin, White Cube [TimesUK]
Tracey Emin’s really done it this time [Evening Standard]
Interview: Tracey Emin [Channel 4 London]
Ghosts of my past [GuardianUK]
Tracey Emin: Those Who Suffer Love at the White Cube, review [Telegraph]
Those Who Suffer Love by Tracey Emin, London [Wallpaper]
Tracey Emin: Art from the heart [Independent]
Lunch with the FT: Tracey Emin [Financial Times]
Tracey Emin: Confessions of a saucy seamstress [GuardianUK]

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‘Untitled’ by Christopher Wool via Museum Ludwig

Christopher Wool won the Wolfgang Hahn Prize Cologne 2009.  As part of the prize, Wool has a solo exhibition at the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, which has also acquired two silkscreen prints by Wool.  Wool is interested primarily in abstract painting, with ‘Porto-Köln’ focusing mainly on a number of large abstract canvases and silkscreen prints.

Museum Ludwig
Christopher Wool
Christopher Wool Wins Wolfgang Hahn Prize [Artinfo]
Christopher Wool: Porto – Köln / Museum Ludwig, Cologne [VernissageTV]

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Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective, the first comprehensive exhibition to feature the artist’s works in New York in 20 years opened to the public  May 20 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, to run through August 16, 2009. The retrospective, marking the 100th anniversary of Bacon’s birth, has brought together a highly impressive international curatorial team, including Gary Tinterow of the Met, Matthew Gale of Tate Modern and Chris Stephens of Tate Britain. The exhibition showcases some 65 paintings, amongst them a handful of never-before-seen gems from private collections, along with important archival materials, photographs and 65 personal items from Bacon’s London studio and estate, which served as the artist’s inspiration for some of the works in the show.

Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective [The Metropolitan Museum of Art]
Francis Bacon’s Provocative Works Featured in Major Retrospective Opening May 20 at Metropolitan Museum [Met Press Release]
Francis Bacon at Tate Britain – Sept. 4th 2008-Jan. 4 2009 [Tate]
Tragic Hero: A Majestic Francis Bacon Show [Time]
Francis Bacon’s Provocative Works Featured in Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum of Art [ArtDaily]
If Paintings Had Voices, Francis Bacon’s Would Shriek [NYTimes]
Sacred Monster [NYMagazine – Jerry Saltz]
Francis Bacon’s Horror Show [Economist – More Intelligent Life]
Francis Bacon (Hardcover) 2009, Matthew Gale, Chris Stephens [Amazon]

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