One of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks exploring the possibilities and potentials for human flight will come to the Smithsonian Institution this fall, on view at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.  Codex on the Flight of Birds, which will begin showing in mid-September, explores the various concerns of flight, including weight, space, and an early exploration of the force of gravity, years before Newton formally named it as such.  “Centuries before any real progress toward a practical flying machine was achieved, Leonardo expressed the seeds of the ideas that would lead to humans spreading their wings,” says National Air and Space chief curator Peter Jakab. (more…)

The Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome has announced critic and curator Hou Hanrou as its new artistitc director.  The Chinese-born Hanrou will take up the position in September, assuming responsibility for the museum’s diverse blend of programming during a time when the museum is struggling to keep its head above water in a difficult European economy. (more…)

In an effort to increase attendance and community engagement, the recently opened Maxxi Museum (National Museum for the Art of the 21st Century) in Rome is branching out, hosting lectures and classes on a variety of subjects in design, art, fashion, and music. “We need the public to animate this space,” said Giovanna Melandri, president of the foundation that runs the Museum. (more…)

Artist Maurizio Cattelan’s Toiletpaper magazine, done in collaboration with photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, has just announced a special edition of collaboratively designed sweatshirts with Italian fashion house MSGM.  Incorporating a number of images from the magazine, the sweatshirts work between a nostalgia for past italian fashions and an irreverent take on the sweatshirt itself.  “I don’t like nostalgia,” says designer Massimo Giorgetti. “I prefer irony.” (more…)

The sale of Pablo Picasso’s 1909 work Compotier et tasse has been blocked by U.S. authorities at the request of the Italian government.  The painting’s current owners, Gabriella Amati and her late husband, Angelo Maj, are being charged with embezzling $44 million from the city of Naples, and the work is suspected to have been purchased with the stolen money.  Immigration and Custons Enforcement director John Morton said: “Restraining this valuable artwork is an effort to help recover some of the estimated $44 million that this couple stole from the tax-paying citizens of Naples.” (more…)

A museum show intended to heal relations between the United States and Italy over claims of looted work has encountered turbulence, after Sicilian officials have refused to ship several works over concerns over tourism.  When asked about the region’s refusal to cooperate, Sicilian official Mariarita Sgarlata noted:  “How would an American tourist react who, trusting his Frommer’s travel guide,  has gone out of his way to visit the island of Mozia to admire this work of art in its original setting, only to discover that the statue is in Tokyo or St. Petersburg?” (more…)

Bashir Makhou, Giardino Occupato (Installation View) (2013) All photos by Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Otherwise Occupied is an exhibition of Palestinian artists organized by al Hoash, a Palestinian art organization based in Jerusalem, as part of the 55^th International Art Exhibition at Venice Biennale 2013. The show is one of 48 Collateral Events hosted around the city. The exhibition features the work of two prominent, internationally renowned artists: Bashir Makhoul and Aissa Deebi. Makhoul is the head of the Winchester School of Art, England, while Deebi is a founding member of ArteEast, a Brooklyn-based organization that supports Middle Eastern art and culture. Both have exhibited work at the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Manhattan, and mainly work with photography. In the past, both have addressed the themes of diaspora, exile and, more broadly, Palestinian politics, unsurprising given that both artists were born inside the 1948 borders of Palestine, and have since immigrated to become citizens of other states. Currently, they are working in the globalized art world, exemplified by Massimiliano Gioni’s Central Pavilion, The Encyclopedic Palace. Nevertheless, the artists still consider themselves Palestinian, underlining the complex political identities of modernity Gioni expressed in his press conference.

Bashir Makhou, Giardino Occupato (Installation View) (2013)

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Damien Hirst, Death or Glory (2001)

In conjunction with the events and exhibitions of the 55th Venice Biennale this summer, Le Stanze del Vetro (“Rooms for Glass”), the joint project by La Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Pentagram Siftung, is currently presenting Fragile?, an exhibition dedicated to the presence and use of glass in contemporary art.  Perhaps one of the more interesting conceits for a Biennale exhibition, the show on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore looks at glass as an aesthetic and and figurative medium in current practice, featuring works by Ai Weiwei, Marcel Duchamp, Pipliotti Rist, Joseph Beuys, and many more.

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Marc Quinn, Breath (2013)

Time and again, Artist Marc Quinn has defined himself as an artist of grand statements.  Utilizing imagery and materials from his surroundings, often cast on symbolically enormous scale, the artist has created a body of work that digs at the complex interrelations of art and science, life and meaning, process and creation.  The act of viewing seems central to Quinn’s body of work, collected for a major solo exhibition in Venice this summer, and running concurrently with the Venice Biennale at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini.  Scale and image converge to create a striking and powerful impression of the human condition for viewers who find themselves in front of his work.

Marc Quinn, Self (2011)

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Outside the 55th Venice Biennale

The press preview for the 55th edition of the Venice Biennale, the international art world’s largest stage, kicked off this week, sprawling across the narrow alleyways and watery causeways of the Italian city.  Art Observed was on site to cover the opening ceremonies, and has this selection of pictures documenting the first day of the fair.

The Opening Reception, with Paolo Barata and Massimo Gioni (more…)

The Venice Biennale

Every two years, the floating city of Venice floods with with the multitudes of art visitors, customers, gallerists and exhibitions that are all a part of the Venice Biennale. This year, marking the 55^th edition of the world’s largest art fair, sees the continuation of an event that first began in 1896. Between June 1^st and November 24^th over 300,000 visitors will travel to Venice for the expansive installations of exhibitions of work from artists in 88 nations, at both official and fringe sites. Art Observed will be on-site this week, with photos from variety of events around the city.

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Despite widespread austerity measures across the Eurozone, many European nations are still heavily investing in national pavilions at this year’s prestigious Venice Biennale.  Countries like Greece, the UK and Germany have earmarked comparable funds to their respective 2011 pavilions, despite budgetary constraints.  “The participating countries will always put resources towards the realisation of their exhibitions in the national pavilions, or find other sources to cover the costs.”  Says Jewish Museum deputy director Jens Hoffmann. (more…)

The Vatican City will be sponsoring pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, and has just announced its list of exhibited artists, featuring photographer Josef Koudelka, multimedia group Studio Azzurro and the artist Lawrence Carroll.  The pavilion, organized by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, will explore themes of “Creation, De-Creation and Re-Creation.”  “We want to create an atmosphere of dialogue between art and faith,” Cardinal Ravasi said. (more…)

Candida Höfer, Teatro Scientifico Bibiena Mantova I (2010), Courtesy Ben Brown Fine Arts

Ben Brown Fine Arts in London presents work by German photographer Candida Höfer, showcasing the artists masterful control, precision, and detail in capturing the grandiosity of Italian Renaissance architecture.  The exhibition, which features images of brightly lit, cavernous interiors of several ornate Italian buildings, depict these majestic spaces as part of the everyday, highlighting the grandeur of the Italian architectural tradition.

Candida Höfer, A Return to Italy (Installation View), via Ben Brown Fine Arts

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Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pistoletto Politico (Installation View), via Luxembourg and Dayan

The Years of Lead, between the late 1960’s and early 1980’s, were a divisive, violent time for the nation of Italy, reflecting the severe growing pains of a country recovering from the horrors of World War II while contending with rapidly shifting power flows and political ideologies that split much of Europe.  With the economy at a standstill, and bloodshed in the streets, the country was forced to take a hard look at itself, evaluating its own identity and divided society.

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pistoletto Politico (Installation View), via Luxembourg and Dayan

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The Guardian has posted a video interview with French artist Laure Prouvost, discussing her winning of the Max Mara Award for Women, and her immersive video work Swallow, exploring the raw emotion of sensation, now on view at Whitechapel Gallery.  “It’s this idea of what’s real and what’s not, expressed in video and bricolage.”  She says.
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For the first time in its 84-year history as an independent state, the Vatican City will have its own contemporary art pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Biennale president Paolo Baratta announced yesterday.  The news comes as the Catholic Church seeks to move forward from issues associated with the last pope stepping down.  “They said they wanted to put into public view the fact that there were other things beyond mere country boundaries, political state boundaries, that united people.” Says Andrea Rose, the British Council Director of Visual Arts, who met with Vatican officials last year. (more…)

The Venice Biennale has released its final list of artists for this summer’s art exhibition, titled The Encyclopedic Palace.  The list includes a number of both prominent and young artists, including Ed Atkins, Uri Aran, and Miroslaw Balka.  “With the Encyclopedic Palace, Massimiliano Gioni (this year’s Biennale’s curator), much more than presenting us with a list of contemporary artists, wishes to reflect on their creative urges and seems to push the question even further: what is the artists’ world?”  says president Paolo Baratta. (more…)

In an unprecedented move, French President François Hollande has cleared Édouard Manet’s 1863 painting Olympia to leave the French capital for the first time since it was given to the nation in 1890.  The painting will travel to Venice for this year’s Biennale, where it will sit beside Titian’s The Venus of Urbino, which itself is legally unable to leave Italy.  “We want to show how Italian cultural models influenced Manet,” says Guy Cogeval, director at the Musée D’Orsay, where the Manet masterpiece has been on view for over 100 years.
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Domenico Gnoli, Ritratto di Luis T (1967) All images courtesy Luxembourg & Dayan unless otherwise noted.

Prodigious Italian artist Domenico Gnoli left behind only several dozen paintings when he met an early fate – at age 36 – in April 1970. Eighteen of those important works are currently on display in the first U.S. exhibition dedicated to the artist in over 40 years. The paintings are primarily acrylic mixed with sand; finely detailed and close cropped, they are intimate portraits of a very certain place and time.

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