Armand Doré, Nude, Smoking and Reclining (c. 1860-65)

The French Exit group show brought to life by the curatorial eye of Mattias Vendelmans invites a dialogue between artists and their muses, considering just what happens when one skips the farewell in search of something more enticing after dark. How does the basic notion of privacy and vulnerability continue to pique our curiosity? Spanning works from oil paintings and sculptures to pen and paper, from Baudelairean Paris to the suburbs of 1930s Stockholm, an ongoing exploration of organic tenderness and bestiality in human nature unfolds.

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Auction Houses are placing an increased emphasis on pre-20th century art and other objects, in an effort to further expand the thriving auction markets.  Offering variety shows that present top works from a variety of areas and cultures, the auctions are designed to encourage top bidders by focusing sales.  “If the auction houses pick their 50 or so best objects, then their top buyers don’t have to sift through several sales,” says Stuart Lochhead, director of Daniel Katz Ltd. “People are less connoisseurial these days. Finance people are always rushing. They have so little time.” (more…)

Giacomo Balla, Mercury Passing Before the Sun (1914), via Art Observed

From the opening lines of the The Futurist Manifesto, on view near the ground floor of the Guggenheim’s current historical survey of the early 20th century Italian avant-garde, one can detect a certain mechanistic determinism, a powerful, single-minded focus on the power of industry, science and machines.  F.T. Marinetti’s famous lines summon the roar of the engine, and the hum of electricity in equal measure, damning an Italy obsessed with its own past, and embracing a new future as a world power.

Umberto Boccioni, Elasticity (Elasticità), (1912), Courtesy Guggenheim Museum (more…)

Vasily Kandinsky, Circles within a Circle (1923), Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950
Photo Credit: The Philadelphia Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Compiling one of the more ambitious exhibitions of work recently shown on the Russian avant-garde, the recently closed exhibition on the work of Vasily Kandinsky offered perhaps one of the best perspectives on the developing voice of one of the 20th century’s most vital painters.  Charting his move from early impressionist works to the conceptually rigorous formalism that he developed as a consequence of his broader exposure to the European art world after his move to Germany, From Blaue Reiter to the Bauhaus, 1910-1925 is a fitting origins story for this influential artist.

Vasily Kandinsky (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)