Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture, 1100-1520"
2008-06-13 until 2008-07-11

Sam Fogg
London, , UK United Kingdom



Sam Fogg’s annual sculpture exhibition Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture, 1100-1520 will be held at 15d Clifford Street, London W1, from Friday 13 June to Friday 11 July 2008. The exhibition will include sculptural works from the Romanesque, Medieval and Renaissance periods, providing collectors and curators with a visual feast. There will be sculptures in marble, stone, wood, bronze, alabaster, ivory and terracotta, varying in scale from large monumental carvings to smaller cabinet pieces. The exhibition will coincide with the fifth staging of London Sculpture Week, 13 to 20 June 2008, when nine London dealers bring this aspect of the arts to the fore.

The collecting of Medieval art is enjoying something of a renaissance. The past five years have seen a series of highly acclaimed exhibitions including most recently, Medieval Ivories from the Thomson Collection at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and Cranach at the Royal Academy of Arts, as well as a number of auctions of great private collections such as the Dormeuil collection at Sotheby’s in November 2007 and the Gillot sale at Christie’s in March 2008, both in Paris. These two auctions saw Medieval works of art fetching considerable sums, underlining the growing appreciation of medieval art and the seriousness with which it is treated by both private collectors and museums.

Sam Fogg is one of a very select few who deal in Romanesque sculpture – sculpture of the early Medieval period, the 11th and 12th centuries – and has seen a growing number of collectors in this area since his first exhibition in 2003. Romanesque sculpture was largely monumental – created for, or as part of, the architectural structure of buildings. Fogg will show a number of architectural elements such as corbels (a projection jutting out from a wall to support a superincumbent weight, such as a column or a vault) and capitals (the crowning member of a column) with carved figurative decoration. Of great interest in the exhibition will be two 12th century corbels discovered making up part of a wall in Mold, Cheshire, which are reused elements from a now destroyed Norman church in Mold (fig. 1). These form a group with two other corbels found in the same place one dating to the 14th and the other to the 15th century. This group embodies the playful and constantly inventive character of Romanesque (and later) subsidiary carving, each one carved with a different subject: a bull, a lion, a king and a man. There will also be a pair of 12th century lions from Italy, carved with muscular bodies and long shaggy manes. Both have circular mouldings on their backs which would have formed the base of a column and indicate that these lions would once have flanked a door or window. The exhibition will also include a range of carved capitals and relief carvings decorated with figures, birds and flowers.

Another highlight of the Romanesque works on show will be a stone column representing the extraordinary figure of Belial, a naked, bearded man consumed by snakes (fig. 2). Belial, who is the embodiment of evil, was carved by one of the artists who worked on the pulpit in Salerno Cathedral dating from the late 12th century.

Among the cabinet pieces on view will be a large and very impressive lion aquamanile with double-headed serpent spout from Germany, Lower Saxony, c. 1400 (fig. 3). This Medieval vessel belongs to a group of heraldic aquamanilae. Its basic form, with broad head, thick legs and paws and robust body, resembles earlier Romanesque examples with the addition of a shield suspended from the lion’s neck. The majestic power of the lion, the ‘king of the beasts’ according to the Medieval Bestiary, accounts for the special development of this special type of aquamanile. Originally, the liturgical aquamanilae expressed the symbolic significance of the ritual washing of the hands before the consecration of the Eucharist and after Mass. In the later Middle Ages, they were used at banquets as well as inns and in private homes.

Of particular note is a marble relief of Ottaviano Augusto, an ancient Roman Emperor, set in profile, crowned and with wild, flowing hair (fig. 4). Carved by Mino da Fiesole (c. 1429-1484), the relief was once in the Peruzzi palace in Florence. The Peruzzi family was one of Florence’s most celebrated lineages while Mino da Fiesole was one of the leading early Renaissance sculptors working in Florence. The relief portrait is therefore an important and high status commission, clearly intended to endorse the importance of that family by presenting ancestral links to Ancient Roman rulers.

The show will include an English alabaster relief panel carved with the Resurrection (fig. 5). English alabaster pieces such as this were hugely popular throughout the 15th century and were made for export to Medieval Europe and Scandinavia, often of varying quality because the workshops were working to feed a large market. However, the Resurrection panel presented by Sam Fogg is a fine example, being relatively large and retaining much of its original polychrome, which is not always the case as these pieces were often stripped during the 19th century. This panel was probably designed as part of a large altarpiece showing the Passion of Christ. Few of these altarpieces remain intact, though many of their panels can be found in museum collections all over the world.

Sam Fogg is a specialist in European Medieval art with departments also focusing on Islamic and Indian art. The company was founded 25 years ago and has long established expertise in the fields of Medieval sculpture, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, Ethiopian and Armenian art, Islamic calligraphy and Indian paintings through highly acclaimed exhibitions and well researched publications. Fogg’s clients include numerous private collectors as well as some of the world’s major institutions.

Arte Contemporanea a Villa Pisani' Opens

VICENZA, ITALY.- An exhibition of works specially created for the site by Igino Legnaghi and Francois Morellet just opened in Bagnolo di Lonigo (province of Vicenza), at the splendid Villa Pisani, perhaps the most outstanding of Andrea Palladio's early villas.

'Arte Contemporanea a Villa Pisani' is an ongoing project of commissions that Manuela Bedeschi and Carlo Bonetti, the current owners of the Villa, have asked Francesca Pola to curate under the supervision of Luca Massimo Barbero, with the aim of seeking a new approach to the patronage of the arts in the Veneto.

The project was launched in 2007 as a result of the owners' passion for art and their desire to revive the roles of patron and spectator; last year the project involved works by Nelio Sonego and Michel Verjux engaged in a perfectly balanced dialogue with the building designed by Palladio in and after 1541, and built in 1544 and 1545 for the patrons, the Pisani family.

This year, on the occasion of the ceremonies for the five hundredth anniversary of the birth of Palladio, two important artists of the previous generation, Igino Legnaghi and Francois Morellet, will be hosted in order to realize a new series of interventions involved in a dialogue with each other as well as in a direct and active relationship with both the architectural spaces and the historical memory of this sixteenth-century building.

The artists have worked both inside and outside the building to create an exhibition that allows visitors to see the relationship between the Villa and themselves from a different point of view: it consists of a journey through the past, present and future of vision, regarded as a physical and mental locus for the merging of various creative presences. For the Villa, Legnaghi has conceived a series of works that relate to the park surrounding it, while Morellet has created works interpreting the spaces and architectural details of Palladio's building.

Mathematical structures and proportions comprise the basis for the big metal sheets designed by Legnaghi to be scattered in the park surrounding the Villa Pisani, establishing a 'path of reflection' on its spaces and a harmonious relationship between form and life, and artistic creation and the natural dimension. In accordance with a logic of elementariness and communicative efficacy based on geometric form and technological materials, Legnaghi's sculptures draw on this relationship with the natural environment, which is the constituent element not only of the fascination but also of the very concept of Palladio's building. The large openings of the Villa's windows appear to invite those inside to enjoy an extensive view of the surrounding park in a relationship that Palladio himself intended to be significant because, for him, the natural setting was the necessary counterpoint to the formal identity of his buildings.

Morellet's project for the Villa Pisani involves a series of interventions, which, through the use of neon and in their relationship with the existing architectural elements, construct a path that allows visitors to become aware of the Villa Pisani's formal and spatial significance. A blue light sign describes a large arc crossing the whole rear wall of the loggia, echoing and, at the same time, contrasting with its monumental and very pure arched form. Behind the loggia, in the central hall, is the work entitled 'Lamentable blanc (White Lamentable)', which appears to be almost suspended in the imposing architectural void created by the height of the building's central block, while for the two cellars, the artist has created two installations consisting of neon lights that are complementary to each other.

On the occasion of the exhibition, two bilingual catalogues including texts by Luca Massimo Barbero, Francesca Pola, Igino Legnaghi and Francois Morellet, photographs of the works on display in the exhibition and bio-bibliographical notes will be published by the Associazione Culturale Villa Pisani Contemporary Art.

The exhibition is under the patronage of the Regione Veneto, the Provincia di Vicenza, the Comune di Vicenza, the Comune di Lonigo, the Pro Loco di Lonigo, the Patto territoriale area berica, C4 Centro Cultura Contemporaneo Caldogno, UNESCO Commissione Nazionale Italiana, the Istituto Regionale per le Ville Venete, the Associazione per le Ville Venete, the Comitato Nazionale per il V Centenario della nascita di Andrea Palladio (1508-2008).

"Daniela Schonbachler: The Silent Art of Secrecy"
2008-06-17 until 2008-09-13
Riflemaker
London, , UK United Kingdom

Murano-based artist Daniela Schonbachler employs a unique glass canvas in a series of stunning architectural works that layer oil and ink in her debut exhibition at Riflemaker this summer. Her two- and three-dimensional works break from the decorative techniques and traditions of the world-famous glassmakers on the island of Murano, off Venice (where Schonbachler has a studio), to challenge divisions between art, architecture and craft. In one series of large-scale ‘paintings’, sheets of layered glass are painted with oil and ink and fused to form transparent works that look into a dark, deep universe poised between tension and tranquility. In newer works, rather than paint directly onto glass, she shows glass blocks on easels set away from the gallery walls - three-dimensional, layered objects that change according to the angle from which they are viewed.

The exhibition, her first solo show in London, takes the idea of contrasts as its point of departure. Schönbächler believes that life is based on two opposing forces, and her paintings explore the tension created by this polarity, resulting in harmony. The overall theme uniting all of Schönbächlers work is one of contemplation, offering an opportunity to take silent refuge from the chaos, commotion and confusion of the world outside.

Daniela Schönbächler was born in Zug, Switzerland. After studying architecture in Paris, she collaborated with architect Mario Botta in Lugano, Switzerland, where her work evolved into more sculptural forms, with glass becoming the element that linked architecture to art. Further technical studies of glass in Germany, Switzerland and Italy were followed by training alongside the sculptor and mentor Luciano Vistosi in Venice, resulting in a collaboration spanning over a decade. Schönbächler continues to work from her studios in Venice and London, evolving her unique intermingling of glass and paint.

Marc Camille Chaimowicz ... In The Cherished Company of Others...

AMSTERDAM.- De Appel presents the first Dutch solo exhibition of the French/British artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz who has only recently been more widely recognized for the idiosyncratic oeuvre developed over almost 35 years. It is the second time that the artist will be shown by de Appel, for in April 1980 Wies Smals invited Chaimowicz to present the performance/installation “Partial Eclipse”. Now, with the complicity of the curator Alexis Vaillant (FR), the decision was made to combine a broad range of works by Marc Camille Chaimowicz with notably numerous architectural models and artworks by a select group of international artists whom the artist feels empathy with. Conceived in the spirit of a playful inquiry and ‘flânerie’ - characteristic of the perception of the artist's idiosyncratic dandyism, this exhibition highlights the idea that an artistic production can function on a parallel level to its mental ‘backdrop’.

In 1972, Marc Camille Chaimowicz first showed “Celebration? Realife”, a cult ground-breaking immersive scatter environment, as well as a performance piece that can be read as a consciously messy and ambivalent reaction to the clean conceits of Conceptualist and post-Minimalist tendencies. According to art historian Tom Holert, “Celebration? Realife” "makes a strategic and important mediation on the changing role of the artist, who in this defining work simultaneously becomes art director, stage designer, choreographer and participant." Parallel to his performances and installations that anticipate the relationships between art, design and popular culture, he made colorful, decorative wallpaper patterns, models, technical drawings as well as ‘environments’, wittily composed interiors ‘decorated’ with collages, oil paintings, carpets, folding screens, ceramics, furniture, architectural objects and self-designed wallpaper and fabrics developed in the 1980s and 1990s, works that testify to a fascination by the contrasts between private and public space. Long before it became fashionable, he integrated his day-today activities into his artistic work and transformed conventional manners and interpersonal behavior into core components of his installations and environments. By probing the decorative possibilities of art, he notably raises questions about the conventional hierarchy that puts fine art above applied art.

The exhibition may be understood as a ‘collective retrospective’ which makes no attempt to present a quasi-museological, chronological overview of the artist’s oeuvre by showing his most representative works. A range of works by Marc Camille Chaimowicz's and a revisited installation of 1975 ("We Chose Our Words With Care, That Neon- Moonlight Evening; It Was As If We Were Party to a Wonderful Alchemy") are combined with works by other artists with whom the artist and the curator have established visual and conceptual links so that the artist’s personal mental world will unfold before the spectator in an associatively organized presentation. The multiple inversions proper to Chaimowicz's work as well as its nonsubordination to a particular form over thirty-five years of production give the exhibition the status of a "potential space" rather than of a disembodied brainstorm.

With:
Anonymous, Richard Artschwager, Nairy Baghramian, Joseph Beuys, Tom Burr, James Lee Byars, Enrico David, Emile Guy, Michael Krebber, Jason Meadows, Clémence Meunier, Jozef Peeters, Loïc Raguénès, Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, Elsa Schiaparelli, Lily van der Stokker, Amikam Toren

And featuring "Jean Cocteau" (2003-2008).

Valencian Museum of Modernity Presents Film Posters in Sweden and Denmark 1915-1942

VALENCIA.- The Valencian Museum of Modernity in Valencia (MuVIM) centers its attention starting today on film posters with a new exhibition that will freshen the summer. The exhibit is titled 'Film posters in Sweden and Denmark 1915-1942 from the Benito Medela- Piquepe Collection curated by Carlos Perez; the show will be on until September 12.

The show contains a selection of 197 film posters made by Swedish and Scandinavian artists during the period between both world wars, three of them measuring over 3 meters.

Carlos Perez, curator of the exhibit said that the Benito Medela film poster collection is the most important in Europe and probably in the world, in which the Swedish and Danish posters have an important place since they are not similar to any in the rest of Europe, where they developed their own graphic style between the Avant Garde and the more commercial art.

Carlos Pérez underlined the importance of these posters during the period in Sweden and Denmark lies in their independence from the American film industry, which had two style books where it gave put details to do street posters as well as printed posters.

Carlos Pérez stated, “They had their own style, they never followed the guidelines established by the Americans. Denmark and Sweden were like an island in regards to poster production as they looked like no other posters made in other countries.”

Teatro-Museo Dalí Presents Two Rarely Seen Paintings On View for the Summer in Figueres

FIGUERES.- Antoni Pitxot, director of the Teatro-Museo Dalí in Figueres and Montse Aguer, director of the Centro de Estudios Dalinianos, have presented today o the media the 17th nightly opening of the museum in Figueres. During the act, they have also presented two works of art which can be viewed all summer and which belong to a private collector. The poster to promote the night visits designed by Bis Dixit was also presented.

Montse Aguer has contextualizad this act with the politics of the Fundación Dalí of showing never before seen or rarely seen paintings made by the master. In this sense, she has said, “we have the pleasure of showing, within the frane of the 17th nightly visits to the Teatro-Museo Dalí in Figueres, the drawing Músicos, c. 1921 and La merienda « sur l’herbe », –the carboard is fruit of the artista using again the support which was proper of this time, on the reverse side we can see Carro estirado por un asno y campesino- both belonging to a private Collection and loaned for a brief time to the Fundación Gala-Salvador Dalí. Starting today, Musicos will be on view at the Sala de las Pescaderías together with a work of art with the same title from the archives of the Fundación Dalí”.

The first paintings the artist made during his formative years are fruit of a mix of influences: the paintings made by Ramon Pichot, which put him in contact with the impressionist school; the drawing lessons with Juan Núñez and the direct contact with the nature of his homeland. The most recurrent themes during this period are his family, the landscape and himself. But, he allows himself to paint other themes such as slice of life scenes, including markets, circus, house interior or themes inspired by the painters he admired at that time such as Édouard Manet. In his journal, Salvador Dalí expresses his devotion in the following way:

“Each time I am more conscious of the difficult that art is; but, each time, I enjoy it more and like it even more. I continue to admire the great French impressionists like Manet, Degas, Renoir. Let them firmly orient my way.”

Édouard Manet presented at the Salon des Réfusés in París during 1863 the work Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe which created controversy because of the theme and the composition. Approximately 60 years later, Dali participated in the exhibition-contest organized by the Associació Catalana d’Estudiants which was celebrated at the Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona from January 16 to 31 of 1922 with a total of 8 works of art, one of which, Lumber 25, was titled La merienda “sur l’herbe”. At some moment in 1921 he chose that precise work of art made by Manet to make at least two versions (one belonging to the Collection of the Foundation, the other to a private collector). One of these could be the one shown at the Galeries Dalmau.

In a letter to his uncle, Anselm Domènech, we can read: “I have almost completely changed the technique and the spectrum, these are much brighter than before, having completely deserted from the dark blues and reds which contrasted (without harmony) with the clarity and luminosity of the others. I continue not being preoccupied with the drawings, which I do not use. The color and feeling is where I am focusing my efforts.”

Source:Artdaily.org

Seven Major Paintings in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Street Series Shown Together



Bathers at Moritzburg 1909

NEW YORK.- Kirchner and the Berlin Street is a focused investigation of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s (German, 1880-1938) renowned Berlin Street Scenes of 1913-1915, bringing together seven major paintings of the series, the first time these paintings have ever been shown together. With the unusual motif of the prostitute, and a visual language of jagged forms, agitated brushwork, acute perspectives, and strident color, the Street Scene paintings evoke the striking contradictions of modern city life, from nighttime glamour and excitement to loneliness, decadence, and danger. In addition, 60 works on paper examine the artist’s subject matter in the Street Scene series, as well as his working process as it evolved. The exhibition draws from public and private collections in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and the United States, providing the most comprehensive examination of the series to date. On view in the Special Exhibitions Gallery on the third floor from August 3 to November 10, 2008, the exhibition is organized by Deborah Wye, The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art. MoMA is the only venue for the exhibition.

The Street Scene series is considered not only the high point of Kirchner’s career, but also a milestone in German Expressionism. Earlier, as a member of the Brücke (Bridge) artists’ group, Kirchner rejected traditional art as it was taught in the academy, seeking instead a more natural and spontaneous freedom of expression. By late 1911, the principal artists of Brücke had moved from the relatively genteel city of Dresden to the teeming metropolis of Berlin, by then the third largest city in Europe, following London and Paris. In May 1913, after finding only moderate success there, and with the individual artists developing along their own paths, the Brücke group disbanded, after eight years of working closely together. In the fall of that same year, at a time of relative loneliness and discouragement, Kirchner began the Street Scene series with unusual resolve and ambition, moving away from the bright colors and curving lines captured in earlier works, and toward a strident palette with angular forms that conjure up the high-pitched energy and lurid atmosphere of Berlin in those years. The fact that this mood was captured on the eve of World War I contributes to the tensions embodied in these paintings. Later, when speaking of the Street Scenes, Kirchner said: “They originated…in one of the loneliest times of my life, during which an agonizing restlessness drove me out onto the streets day and night, which were filled with people and cars.”

Ms. Wye states: “Through a range of effects, these paintings present a complex view of the modern city. Created in a period of rapid change and development, they mark a distinct time not only in Kirchner’s life, but also in the history of Berlin and of Germany as a whole.”

To contextualize the Street Scene series, the exhibition is divided into two sections, with the seven paintings forming the centerpiece. In one area, Kirchner’s working process is revealed through drawings, pastels, and prints that demonstrate Kirchner’s commitment to this theme and also reveal the investigatory method he used to refine his subject and establish his artistic means. Another section focuses on Kirchner’s unusual choice of the prostitute motif as his symbol for the city, through contrasting examples of his more typical cityscapes and studies of the eroticized female figure.

The seven paintings in the Berlin Street Scene Series are Five Women on the Street (1913), Berlin Street Scene (1913), Street, Berlin (1913), Street Scene (Friedrichstraße in Berlin) (1914), Two Women on the Street (1914), Potsdamer Platz (1914), and Women on the Street (1915). Street, Berlin has long been part of MoMA’s collection. At first glance, it appears to simply depict elegantly dressed figures on the way to a fancy event. But the strident color and knowing glances of the female figures, with their swaying hips and syncopated steps, suggest a more illicit role. The crowds of men also add a menacing note.

In Berlin Street Scene (1913), two prostitutes make up the painting’s center, while two men before them are viewed from behind, seemingly about to be preyed upon. The bright red lips of the male figure on the right forge a direct link to the heavily made-up women. If the male face is indeed a self-portrait of the artist—as some have argued—the figure’s identification with the prostitutes is especially provocative.

With Five Women on the Street (1913), Kirchner has placed the prostitutes in a space that resembles a stage, relating them to dancers in a revue. Lined up rhythmically, these figures, in their proliferation, also reference the abundance of streetwalkers in Berlin at that time.

Unlike the other Street Scene paintings, where usual signs of city life are kept at the periphery, the monumental Potsdamer Platz (1914) is set in a recognizable spot in early-twentieth-century Berlin—specifically Potsdamer Platz, as identified by the red train station and rounded building housing a café seen in the background. The primary figures of Potsdamer Platz, standing on a traffic island, call to mind mannequins in store windows set on revolving platforms.

Considering the large number of works on paper related to the Street Scene paintings, it is clear that Kirchner held high ambitions for this series. In the section of the exhibition devoted to these works, one finds drawings in ink, pastel, and charcoal, along with prints and sketchbook studies that demonstrate Kirchner’s probing creative process. However, none of these works are strictly preparatory; some exhibit specific references to the paintings, while others share generalized movements or moods.

Included in the exhibition are three of Kirchner’s sketchbooks (seen also in electronic versions that allow for pages to be viewed), revealing how Kirchner observed the world around him, always striving to capture his reactions with an immediacy and authenticity of feeling before returning to the studio. As he later said: “It seems as though the goal of my work has always been to dissolve myself completely into the sensations of the surroundings in order to then integrate this into a coherent painterly form.” As part of his working process, Kirchner experimented with patterns of light and dark, combinations of colors, and various surface rhythms achieved through hatching pen strokes, gouges in woodblock, and scratches on etching plates.

In Five Cocottes (1914) and Women on Potsdamer Platz (1914), two woodcuts in the exhibition, Kirchner seems to closely follow the compositions of the related paintings. But in fact there are significant differences, indicating that printmaking, like drawing, could play an experimental role in Kirchner’s evolving imagery.

Kirchner also explored thematic concerns in these works on paper. In one pastel and charcoal, Berlin Street Scene (1914), the central female figure is accompanied by a male, while in the painting of the same scene, the male figure is almost fully obscured behind what looks like a lamppost. Instead, the woman has been joined by companions, all striding forward and implying a kind of solidarity among those who prowled the streets of nighttime Berlin.

Throughout Kirchner’s career, female figures with erotic overtones were among his primary motifs, and vistas of cities also appear frequently. One section of the exhibition explores these subjects, in works from the years leading up to and including the period of the Street Scenes, in an effort to highlight the contrasting approach he used in the paintings.

Kirchner’s representations of the city usually depicted buildings, bridges, and monuments, with people barely noted. Many hint at his prior architectural training. One exception is the painting in MoMA’s collection entitled, Street, Dresden (1908/19), created during Kirchner’s early years as part of the Brücke artists’ group. Its bright colors and spontaneous strokes capture the spirit of shoppers at midday, in contrast to the lurid atmosphere of nighttime Berlin found in the street scenes.

For Kirchner, and the artists of the Brücke group, the female nude was considered a fundamental building block of art. However, they rebelled against the traditional, idealized conception of the body, fostering instead a more open and intimate relationship to nudity. In Bather with Hat (1913), for example, the way in which Kirchner pictures the torque of the body and sway of the hips in the central figure expresses an unrestrained sexuality. When the artists turned their attention to cabaret dancers in the nightspots of the city, it was also in search of an authentic vitality. Kirchner captured a raw and energized emotion through the movements of the dancers’ bodies and their exotic costumes. The vivid eroticism revealed in such work differs from Kirchner’s interpretation of the prostitute in his Berlin Street Scenes, where allure is coupled with alienation, and the “women of the night” come to symbolize life in the modern city.