Art History - Past & Present

Architectural Digest (blog)Los Angeles Gets a New Renzo Piano-designed MuseumArchitectural Digest (blog)In 2016, if all goes according to plan, Los Angeles will have a new architectural showpiece and yet another place of pilgrimage for movie...

"Long before smartphones turned so many of us into amateur photographers and revolutionised how we depict each other through social media, there were the works of French Impressionist Edouard Manet.

Manet's portraits and how they were influenced by photography are the focus of "Manet: Portraying Life" at the Toledo Museum of Art, the only U.S. museum to host the exhibition before it moves to The Royal Academy of Arts in London next winter."

via @Independent

Love him, hate him, Banksy will always draw some sort of polarizing opinion. Most people will recognize that the man has wit that reaches the ends of the earth, while others think he is an overrated phenomenon that does not deserve the hype. *I agree with the former...the man is a genius with social commentary and the visual arts~az 

"Abraham Roentgen (1711–1793) and his son David (1743–1807) were among 18th century’s most celebrated cabinetmaking. From around 1742 to its closing in the early 1800s their innovative designs were combined with intriguing mechanical devices to revolutionize traditional French and English furniture types. From its headquarters in Germany the workshop employed novel marketing and production techniques to serve an international clientele.Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art features sixty to sixty-five pieces of furniture and clocks—several of which have never before been lent for exhibition complemented by paintings and prints that depict these unrivaled masterpieces in contemporary interiors.

Extravagant Inventions is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City through January 27, 2013."

via @HomaNasab

"SAINT LOUIS, MO.- This fall the saint louis art museum presents Federico Barocci: Renaissance Master. Opening October 21, 2012, this international exhibition showcases a trove of exceptionally beautiful paintings and studies, the majority of which have never before been seen in this country, gathered from more than 35 institutions worldwide. Federico Barocci was one of the most innovative Italian artists of the second half of the 16th century and was highly sought after by both religious and secular patrons. A major influence on European masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Barocci's art combines the beauty of the High Renaissance and the dynamism of the Baroque. In addition to his refined paintings, Barocci completed thousands of preparatory studies (over 1,500 survive), including pastel drawings and oil sketches— a technique he pioneered."

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In early 2005, the National Gallery of Art brought together for the first time Rembrandt van Rijn's powerful late portraits of religious figures, executed at a time of great personal turmoil. Rembrandt's Late Religious Portraits ...

"BARCELONA.- The Fundació Joan Miró presents Explosion! The Legacy of jackson pollock, an exhibition curated by Magnus af Petersens and organised in conjunction with the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. After the Second World War, many artists wanted to start from scratch by attacking painting, which was seen to represent artistic conventionality. Explosion! takes off where modernism ends; when it was so ripe that it was on the verge of exploding. Which it did, in the form of a variety of new ways of making art. Practically every door was opened with an aggressive kick, and a new generation of artists began seeing themselves not as painters or sculptors but simply as artists, who regarded all material and subjects as potential art. That is how the North American artist and writer Allan Kaprow, the man who invented the word “happening”, described the situation in 1956 in his now legendary essay “The Legacy of jackson pollock”. Even if doors were opened to all techniques, much of the new art - happenings, performance and conceptualism – sprang from new approaches to painting. There was a development, a shift of focus, from painting as an art object and as representation, to the process behind the work, to the ideas that generate art, and performative aspects."

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"NEW YORK, NY.- To visualize life-size or colossal marbles, the great Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) began by rapidly modeling small clay sketches. Fired as terracotta, these studies are bold, expressive works in their own right. Together with related drawings, they preserve the first traces of Bernini’s fervid imagination and unique creative process that evolved into some of the most famous and spectacular statuary in Rome, including the fountains in the Piazza Navona and the angels on the Ponte Sant’ Angelo. Bernini: Sculpting in Clay features 39 of these terracotta sketch models, shown together for the first time, with 30 drawings. Due to unprecedented loans especially granted for this occasion, the exhibition is the first to retrace Bernini’s unparalleled approach to sculptural design and his use of vigorous clay studies and drawings in directing the largest workshop of his time. The exhibition offers viewers a more profound insight into the artist’s dazzling creative mind and his impact on the fabric of Baroque Rome."

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"NEW YORK, NY.- Picasso Black and White, the first major exhibition to focus on the artist’s lifelong exploration of a black-and-white palette throughout his prolific career, is being presented at the Guggenheim Museum from October 5, 2012, to January 23, 2013. The exhibition features 118 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from 1904 to 1971, and offers new and striking insights into Pablo Picasso’s vision and working methods. This chronological presentation comprises significant loans drawn from private and public collections across Europe and the United States, five of which have never before exhibited or published, including works from the Picasso family and other lenders that are on public view for the first time. Thirty-eight of these artworks are having their first U.S. presentation."

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