WORLD ART NEWS

This October sees the opening at the Museo del Prado of the first exhibition in Spain devoted to the work of Édouard Manet (1832-1883). The exhibition, entitled Manet at the Prado, has been made possible through the sponsorship of the Fundacion Winterthur, and will feature 110 of the greatest works by this French painter (58 paintings, 30 prints and 22 drawings). This is the most significant retrospective to be devoted to Manet’s work since the one held in Paris and New York in 1983. The exhibition is part of a far-ranging collaboration between the Museo del Prado, the Musee d’Orsay (Paris) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).

Photo, above: Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère, 1881-82; Courtauld Institute Galleries, London. This sparkling portrayal shows extensive use of peinture claire, a technique Manet himself evolved.

Edouard Manet, born on January 23, 1832, Paris, France. Died on April 30, 1883, Paris, France.French painter and printmaker who in his own work accomplished the transition from the realism of Gustave Courbet to Impressionism. Manet broke new ground in choosing subjects from the events and appearances of his own time and in stressing the definition of painting as the arrangement of paint areas on a canvas over and above its function as representation. Exhibited in 1863 at the Salon des Refusés, his Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe ("Luncheon on the Grass") aroused the hostility of the critics and the enthusiasm of a group of young painters who later formed the nucleus of the Impressionists. His other notable works include Olympia (1863) and A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882). Encyclopadeia Britannica.

Surrealism and Modernism from the Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Phillips Collection
Washington, DC, USA

The Phillips Collection welcomes Surrealism and Modernism from the Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, a selection of 59 paintings, collages, and sculptures by the most significant avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century. Surrealism and Modernism represents an outstanding array of major artistic movements in the twentieth century—from expressionist landscapes and classic abstract painting to surrealist illusionism and abstract expressionism. This exhibition also provides a look at a unique era in the history of collecting by American museums, when aesthetically adventurous directors struggled to make the case for modern art to a suspicious public through purchases and exhibitions of work by living artists from Europe, America and Latin America. Although located a few hours away from New York, the Wadsworth Atheneum in the 1930s scored a series of acquisition firsts of the kind that might have been expected of the Museum of Modern Art.

Call to Artists: Museum of Computer Art
Cork Gallery, Lincoln Center
New York, NY, USA

The Museum of Computer Art is proud to announce a competition and sale of digital art at the prestigious Cork Gallery at Lincoln Center, New York City. This is a live group show sponsored and arranged by the Museum of Computer Art through the courtesy of Cork Gallery and the Visual Arts League (VAL). These are all not-for-profit organizations.

The Art Gallery of Ontario will be the sole Canadian venue for a major exhibition of sculptures by renowned French 19th-century artist Edgar Degas from October 11, 2003 to January 4, 2004. Degas Sculptures will present 73 bronzes from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen - one of only four complete sets in existence. 'The Art Gallery of Ontario is proud to host this extraordinary collection of Degas sculptures,' said Matthew Teitelbaum, AGO Director and CEO. 'This will be a rare opportunity for our visitors to experience the unique grace and beauty of these works.'

Photo, above: Place de la Concorde
1875 (250 Kb); Oil on canvas, 78.4 x 117.5 cm (30 7/8 x 46 1/4 in); No. 3K 1399; Formerly collection Gerstenberg/Scharf, Berlin; Hermitage, St Petersburg

Edgar Degas, (Hilaire-Germain-) , born on July 19, 1834, Paris. France. Died on September 27, 1917, Paris, France. French artist, acknowledged as the master of drawing the human figure in motion. Degas worked in many mediums, preferring pastel to all others. He is perhaps best known for his paintings, drawings, and bronzes of ballerinas and of race horses.

Photo: Danseuse assise
c. 1879-80 (130 Kb); "Seated Dancer"; Charcoal and pastel on paper mounted on pasteboard, 63.5 x 48.7 cm (25 x 19 1/8 in); The Hermitage, St. Petersburg; No. GR 155-99. Formerly collection Otto Krebs, Holzdorf.

The art of Degas reflects a concern for the psychology of movement and expression and the harmony of line and continuity of contour. These characteristics set Degas apart from the other impressionist painters, although he took part in all but one of the 8 impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886. Degas was the son of a wealthy banker, and his aristocratic family background instilled into his early art a haughty yet sensitive quality of detachment. As he grew up, his idol was the painter Jean Auguste Ingres, whose example pointed him in the direction of a classical draftsmanship, stressing balance and clarity of outline. After beginning his artistic studies with Louis Lamothes, a pupil of Ingres, he started classes at the Ecole des Beaux Arts but left in 1854 and went to Italy. He stayed there for 5 years, studying Italian art, especially Renaissance works. Returning to Paris in 1859, he painted portraits of his family and friends and a number of historical subjects, in which he combined classical and romantic styles.

In Paris, Degas came to know Édouard Manet and in the late 1860s he turned to contemporary themes, painting both theatrical scenes and portraits with a strong emphasis on the social and intellectual implications of props and setting. In the early 1870s the female ballet dancer became his favorite theme.

He sketched from a live model in his studio and combined poses into groupings that depicted rehearsal and performance scenes in which dancers on stage, entering the stage, and resting or waiting to perform are shown simultaneously and in counterpoint, often from an oblique angle of vision. On a visit in 1872 to Louisiana, where he had relatives in the cotton business, he painted The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans (finished 1873; Musée Municipal, Pau, France), his only picture to be acquired by a museum in his lifetime. Other subjects from this period include the racetrack, the beach, and cafe interiors. After 1880, Pastel became Degas's preferred medium. He used sharper colors and gave greater attention to surface patterning, depicting milliners, laundresses, and groups of dancers against backgrounds now only sketchily indicated. For the poses, he depended more and more on memory or earlier drawings. Although he became guarded and withdrawn late in life, Degas retained strong friendships with literary people. In 1881 he exhibited a sculpture, Little Dancer (a bronze casting of which is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and as his eyesight failed thereafter he turned increasingly to sculpture, modeling figures and horses in wax over metal armatures. These sculptures remained in his studio in disrepair and were cast in bronze only after his death. EB.

Fenosa and His Friend Picasso
Fundacao Arpad Szenes - Vieira da Silva
Lisbon, Portugal

For several years Arpad Szenes and Vieira da Silva and the Catalan sculptor Apelles Fenosa had adjacent ateliers in Montparnasse in Paris. The friendship between the three artists was a natural result of their day to day relationship brought about from their similar interests and the friends they had in common. There was a mutual admiration and as proof of this admiration Vieira collected Fenosa's sculptures which are nowadays at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Jem Southam is one of the key figures in British photography of the last twenty years. Southam was short listed for the prestigious Citibank Photography Prizein 2001 alongside Roni Horn, Hellen van Meene and Boris Mikhailov, and is the winner of several international awards. His work is in numerous collections including the V&A, the British Council and the Government Art Collection. Jem Southam’s photographs of the natural world capture the landscape in a continual state of flux. His work catalogues the effects of time, climate and man on the land.

Broader than Broadway: A Site-specific Installation by Donald Bousted and Gary O'Connor
seven contemporary
London, United Kingdom

A site-specific installation of audio and text inspired by archive material. The work responds to historical and contemporary aspects of life on Broadway Market. These responses address our perception of historical data, questioning value, meaning and method. Number seventy-seven is viewed as a shop space (which is was, prior to becoming a gallery, since the 1830s) which plays host to a range of intriguing characters.

Angela Leach: Shimmy
Cambridge Galleries , Cambridge, ON, Canada

Since 1992, Toronto artist Angela Leach has been working on a project entitled Abstract Repeat – a series of acrylic paintings which investigate the optical and spatial transformation of the picture plane by using repetition in combination with color and line. Random order is used to create a vibrating optical effect, while color repeated at regular intervals creates the appearance of three dimensional space.

Peter Cramond, Bryce Brown and Graham Grow Bare Their Figures
Axiom Gallery , Tauranga, New Zealand

An exhibition featuring figurative paintings, drawings and sculptures from 3 established Tauranga artists opened at the Axiom Café and Gallery on the 18th of October. The showcase features new work from painter - Graham Crow, painter and sculptor - Peter Cramond, and painter - Bryce Brown. Although the work of each artist differs vastly, viewers will notice an inspirational theme focusing on nature and the human figure running through the show.

Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai (Concrete Art Association), Gallery ART U. Osaka, Ja pan

In the middle of the 50's, young artists who gathered around their leader Jiro Yoshihara, embarked on their adventure to create an art that had never existed before. From Kazuo Shiraga's 'foot' paintngs, Saburo Murakami's performance of tearing shoji paper on sliding doors to Atsuko Tanaka's dresses covered with millions of flashing light bulbs, their provocative experiments have become legends today and still keep attracting people who see their works for the first time many years after the group was dissolved.

2003 Mayor's Art Show to Features Work by Jerry Ross ,Jacobs Gallery at the Hult Center, Eugene, OR, USA

Eugene, Oregon artist Jerry Ross is featured this month at the Jacobs Gallery in the Hult Center int he group exhibition entitled '2003 Mayor's Art Show'. His painting 'La Vedova di Guerra (The War Widow)' won a jurors prize. The annual Mayor's Art Show features an array of artwork created by artists residing in Lane County, Oregon. The 2003 jury panel consists of Judy Howard, painter and owner of Hanson Howard Gallery in Ashland, Megan O'Connell, print maker and Art faculty at the University of Oregon, and David Turner, Director of the University Museum of Art.

Perfectly Real: Women in Bits and Bytes , Watermans
London, United Kingdom

If you had the opportunity to design your ideal woman, how would you shape her looks? What’s your idea of physical female perfection? A shapely, blue eyed brunette or someone unusual from deep within your imagination? Welcome to PERFECTLY REAL, an exhibition devoted to the world of digital animation where virtual female characters are created with such life-like looks and behavior/personality traits that what is real, and what is computer generated, is instantly blurred—producing realistic human forms is the biggest challenge for computer animators today.

Giorgio Armani: A Retrospective, Royal Academy of Arts
London, United Kingdom

The Royal Academy opens its new exhibition space at Burlington Gardens with the exhibition Giorgio Armani: A Retrospective. Organized by the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation in cooperation with the Royal Academy of Arts, this major exhibition explores the career of the internationally renowned fashion designer. Featuring over 400 garments, alongside original sketches and video presentations, the exhibition offers a thematic look at Armani and his development over the last three decades.

Call to Artists: A Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose
Grand Forks Art Gallery
Grand Forks, BC, Canada

The British government and all its predecessors were denounced for "undiminished philistinism" yesterday by the curator of an exhibition celebrating a century of works of art acquired with the help of the charity Art Fund.

Photo: Antonio Canova's Three Graces, one of the works of art saved by the Art Fund. Photo: Sarah Lee

Professor Richard Verdi challenged the government to "stump up" the £35m needed to keep Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks at the National Gallery in London, to stop it being sold to the Getty museum in California. He said: "Can anyone seriously suggest that the country would not be much much poorer without the great works of art in this exhibition? The National Gallery is the greatest place in the world for the study of early works by Raphael, and that's where the picture should be. That's where it would be of the greatest value to members of the public and indeed to scholars." Prof. Verdi dismissed suggestions by art scholars that the picture might be a fake or studio copy, saying: "For God's sake! If it's not Raphael then it must be the work of some even greater artist whose name is currently unknown to us. Of course it's a Raphael." The exhibition at the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank celebrates a century of works that did not get away. The interior of the gallery, formerly a building with all the charm of a concrete breeze block, has been transformed by architect Piers Gough into a shimmering golden cave heaped with treasure.

The 400 exhibits, chosen from 500,000 which the Art Fund has bought or helped buy since 1903, include ancient Greek gold and a Roman bust of Augustus that was once buried under temple steps so that his enemies could trample him underfoot every time they passed. There is also Velazquez's Rokeby Venus, which competes with Canova's Three Graces for the title of sexiest bottom in art. The Becket casket, which may once have held the bones of the murdered bishop; a golden lizard salvaged from a shipwrecked Armada galleon and Mary Queen of Scots's last letter, written to the King of France hours before her death begging him to pay her servants, are also on display. Prof. Verdi, director of the Barber Institute in Birmingham, toured Britain to choose the works. In the case of the shimmering John Martin landscape of Adam and Eve settling down for a chat in paradise with the angel Raphael, he made his decision after a flashlight inspection in an unlit museum store on a wet Saturday afternoon in Kirkcaldy, Fife.

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