INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA

Marina Vaizey, Tom Birchenough
Old, New and Now. LONDON’S ROYAL ACADEMY TURNS 250

#4 2018 (61)

The anniversaries of celebrated cultural institutions are Janus-like: they look backwards to history to commemorate and celebrate - and forwards towards modernisation and change. Marking its 250 th "birthday” this year, London’s Royal Academy of Arts has made a huge and optimistic affirmation of its future, and thus of the role of art in the society which it inhabits. Its private supporters have backed an enormous fundraising campaign, with some £84 million raised to support a physical expansion of the Academy’s premises which underlines a much enhanced engagement with both professional practitioners and the general public.

Sarah Kent
DAMIEN HIRST. MASTER OF HIS - OWN DESTINY

#2 2016 (51)

For five months in summer 2012 London’s Tate Modern staged a major retrospective of Damien Hirst’s work; despite mixed reviews, the show became a star attraction, on a par with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations and the London Olympics. To get in people would queue for hours: perhaps they wanted to inhale the sweet smell of success, or find out what makes the work quite so valuable. Either way, it provided an opportunity to reappraise the achievements of an artist who is (in)famous in his own right, but who also masterminded the early success of the graduates who came to be known as the Young British Artists (YBAs) and who dramatically changed the London art scene in the early 1990s.

Marina Vaizey
LUCIAN FREUD: REBEL WITH A CAUSE

#2 2016 (51)

Ritualistic, spontaneous, improvisatory, disciplined, anarchic, unfashionable, indifferent, insatiable, obsessed, risk-taking yet curiously wedded to routines: Lucian Freud’s life (1922-2011) was a mass of self-imposed contradictions, while his art was almost alarmingly focused, intense and unremitting, and the product of unvarying determination. He never, from his hallucinatory early drawings, prints and paintings on a relatively small scale to the paintings of his last decades, with rich thick impasto, and occasionally crowded with figures, deviated from his obsession not only with the observed world, but his observed world. The exhibition “Lucian Freud Portraits” at London’s National Portrait Gallery collected more than 100 works from museums and private collections - the first major show since the artist died on 20 July 2011, but in which he was involved until his death. It will perhaps be the culmination of his lifetime’s preoccupation with private faces in public places, and public faces in private places - for many of those he painted were never identified by name.

Tom Birchenough
WYNDHAM LEWIS. PORTRAITS OF FRIENDS AND FOES

#2 2016 (51)

Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a key figure of the English modernist movement in both art and literature, acquainted with - as friend or enemy - almost all the key figures of British culture in the first half of the 20th century. Best known from 1914 as the founder and leading proponent of the pioneering British modernist movement Vorticism, his considerable legacy in another field, portraiture, was the subject of a retrospective at London’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG).

Sergei Orlov
Watch, Listen, Achieve

#1 2016 (50)

"Seeing" means not just looking, but contemplating and comprehending the world around us. "Hearing sounds" means not just listening, but joining in with the rhythms, the very soundings of the Universe. That is close to how the legendary Lao Tzu defined the true nature of sight and hearing in his poetic treatise Tao Te Ching ("A Book about Way and Power"). The sage believed meditation allows a man to relieve his mind of everyday thoughts and troubles, to go beyond the material world in his consciousness, achieving the boundaries of the immense world of natural phenomena.

 

Jasper Rees
The Forms of Florence

#4 2013 (41)

THE SCULPTED SPIRIT OF FLORENCE IS REDISCOVERED THROUGH ITS ANTIQUE ROOTS IN THE MAGISTERIAL EXHIBITION "THE SPRINGTIME OF THE RENAISSANCE. SCULPTURE AND THE ARTS IN FLORENCE 1400-60" AT THE CITY'S PALAZZO STROZZI. ORGANIZED JOINTLY WITH THE LOUVRE, IT MOVES TO PARIS AT THE END OF SEPTEMBER, RUNNING THERE UNTIL EARLY 2014.

 

Marina Vaizey
The Walpole Paintings at Houghton Hall: A Brief Homecoming

#4 2013 (41)

THE EXHIBITION "HOUGHTON REVISITED", WHICH RUNS UNTIL NOVEMBER 24 AT HOUGHTON HALL IN NORFOLK, ENGLAND, MUST COUNT AS THE MAJOR UK-RUSSIAN VISUAL ARTS PROJECT OF 2013. 70 WORKS FROM THE WALPOLE COLLECTION, ASSEMBLED BY BRITAIN'S FIRST PRIME MINISTER SIR ROBERT WALPOLE IN THE EARLY 18TH CENTURY, AND THEN SOLD IN 1779 TO CATHERINE THE GREAT TO BECOME PART OF THE HERMITAGE, RETURNED TO HANG IN THEIR ORIGINAL HOME AT HOUGHTON HALL, IN ROOMS REMODELLED TO MATCH THEIR ORIGINAL SURROUNDINGS.

 

Natella Voiskounski
A Renaissance Assassinated

#4 2013 (41)

The exhibition "Boris Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv 1915-1931" at the Ukrainian Museum in New York explores the destinies of Kharkov modernism through the life and artwork of one of its most pre-eminent figures. The tally of years, as on a tombstone, defines the brief period of the development and flourishing of modernism in Kharkov.

 

 

Lyubov Golovina
Mark Antokolsky: " I have done every thing I could..."

#3 2013 (40)

Radical shifts in art are very often connected with the birth of outstanding creative personalities. The second half of the 19th century was just such an example: over a short period of time a real constellation of art-stars appeared, who inspire true lovers of art to this day. Among them is the sculptor Mark Antokolsky; the attitudes towards him of art critics from diametrically opposed wings of art – the democratic and the academic – were as different as the trends of art they represented. This juxtaposition did not make his life easier, but did make him a notable figure in the history of Russian sculpture.

FRANK HØIFØDT
Edvard Munch "...The Sun Was Setting"

#2 2013 (39)

EDVARD MUNCH'S ICONIC IMAGE OF MODERN MAN "THE SCREAM" - THE BEST-KNOWN PICTURE IN THE WORLD AND THE SEMINAL WORK OF EXPRESSIONISM - CAPTURES THE VULNERABILITY AND TRAGIC ASPECT OF HUMAN EXISTENCE. INDEBTED TO VINCENT VAN GOGH AND PAUL GAUGUIN, MUNCH (1863-1944) SEARCHED FOR A NEW ART OF DEPTH AND AUTHENTICITY. TODAY, "THE SCREAM" HAS BECOME AN UBIQUITOUS IMAGE OF POPULAR CULTURE, SIMULTANEOUSLY "APPROPRIATED" BY AN IRONIC POSTMODERNITY. BOTH EXTREMES SEEM RELEVANT IN UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT OF THE SPECTACULAR PRICE OF $120 MILLION THAT WAS PAID FOR A PASTEL VERSION OF THE IMAGE IN SPRING 2012. THE FAME OF "THE SCREAM" HAS COME TO EXCEED THE FAME OF THE ARTIST: THIS DISCREPANCY SEEMS TO BE DIMINISHING, HOWEVER, AS LARGE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS MAKE VIEWERS MORE FAMILIAR WITH THE BROADER ASPECTS OF MUNCH'S ART AND LEGACY. CELEBRATING THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARTIST'S BIRTH, THE MUNCH MUSEUM AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY IN OSLO GIVE A VAST, JOINT PRESENTATION OF THE ARTIST'S WORK THIS SUMMER AND AUTUMN.

Kathleen Buehler
Surreal Sparks: The Legacy of Meret Oppenheim

#2 2013 (39)

THE GREAT SWISS ARTIST, POET AND THINKER MERET OPPENHEIM WOULD HAVE CELEBRATED HER HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY ON 6 OCTOBER 2013. IF THIS WERE NOT SUFFICIENT REASON TO BRING OUT OUR COLLECTIONS AND TAKE ANOTHER INTENSE LOOK AT THEM AFTER THE MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION IN 2006, TODAY THE QUESTION IS - WHAT STATUS CAN HER ART CLAIM AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF RECENT ARTISTIC OUTPUT FROM SWITZERLAND?

ANNA ILINA
Russian Realism in an American Landscape

#1 2013 (38)

A FAMILY ENCOUNTER WITH RUSSIAN ART LED JOHN AND KATHY WU RDEMAN TO CREATE A PIONEERING PRIVATE ART COLLECTION IN VIRGINIA - WITH A PARTICULAR EMPHASIS ON RUSSIAN REALISM AND THE PLEIN AIR TRADITION. LARGE PRIVATE COLLECTIONS HAVE OFTEN FORMED THE BASIS FOR FUTURE ART GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS - THE NAMES OF PAVEL AND SERGEI TRETYAKOV, IVAN MO-ROZOV AND SERGEI SHCHUKIN, ANDREW MELLON AND SAMUEL KRESS, ALEXEI BAKHRUSHIN AND LEVKIY ZHEVERZHEEV, EDOUARD ANDRE AND NELIE JACQUEMART, SOLOMON GUGGENHEIM, HENRY FRICK AND PETER LUDWIG ARE ALL TESTAMENT TO THAT PHENOMENON. AMONG CONTEMPORARY PRIVATE COLLECTIONS OF RUSSIAN ART OF THIS KIND SOME, LIKE THAT OF SLAVIST RENE GUERRA IN FRANCE, ARE WELL KNOWN, WHILE OTHERS ARE STILL WAITING TO BE POPULARIZED AND STUDIED.

Karin Hellandsjø
H.M. QUEEN SONJA'S ART COLLECTION

#4 2012 (37)

Queen Sonja’s personal engagement in Norwegian art and culture goes back a long way. Over the years, the Queen has actively participated in Norway’s artistic and cultural spheres not just as its high patron but also as an important key figure; her efforts in casting light upon and promoting Norwegian art has gained her respect throughout Norway and far beyond.

 

 

Alexander Rozhin
Art Beyond Fascism

#4 2012 (37)

Running at Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi until the end of January 2013, the exhibition “The Thirties. The Arts in Italy Beyond Fascism” features artists who came to public notice after exhibiting at the Venice Biennales during Italy’s Fascist era. It provides an opportunity to cast a fresh look at the artistic culture of this tragic historical period of European civilisation in the 20th century – one with regard to which there has been little variance of opinion to date among its interpreters and judges.

 

 

 

Sarah Kent
Damien Hirst - Master of His Own Destiny

#2 2012 (35)

This summer for five months, London's Tate Modern is staging a major retrospective of Damien Hirst's work; despite mixed reviews, the show has become a star attraction on a par with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations and the London Olympics. To get in people are queuing for hours; perhaps they want to inhale the sweet smell of success or find out what makes the work so valuable. Either way it provides an opportunity to reappraise the achievements of an artist who is (in)famous in his own right, but who also masterminded the early success of the graduates who came to be known as the Young British Artists (YBAs) and who dramatically changed the London art scene in the early 1990s.

“GRANY” FOUNDATION PRESENTS

Natella Voiskounski
The Cone Sisters: Collectors for Pleasure

#1 2012 (34)

The New York Jewish Museum's show last year, "Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore", proved breathtaking. The exhibition displayed only a small part of what has been called "a collection of collections" of exquisite paintings, graphic works, prints, sculpture, furniture, embroidery, rugs, and textiles. But the core of the collection, its pride and glory, is Matisse, whose portraiture, still-lifes, sculpture and landscapes were on view. The exhibition told the fascinating story of the two sisters who, led by a female instinct for buying beautiful and often useless — or at least unnecessary — things, developed a perfect taste for genuine art and became distinguished collectors of 19th- and 20th-century modern European art. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," wrote the British poet John Keats, and once the Cone sisters had experienced the joy of art, they cherished this sublime feeling throughout their lives.

Lisa Mintz Messinger
Romare Bearden's "The Block": An American Story

#1 2012 (34)

In 2011, in celebration of the centenary of Romare Bearden's birth, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York featured one of the artist's largest and most important work of art, the mural-size collage "The Block" from the museum's collection.

Marina Vaizey
LUCIAN FREUD:
Rebel with a Cause

#4 2011 (33)

Ritualistic, spontaneous, improvisatory, disciplined, anarchic, unfashionable, indifferent, insatiable, obsessed, risk-taking yet curiously wedded to routines: Lucian Freud’s life (1922-2011) was a mass of self-imposed contradictions, while his art was almost alarmingly focused, intense and unremitting, and the product of unvarying determination. He never, from his hallucinatory early drawings, prints and paintings on a relatively small scale to the paintings of his last decades, with rich thick impasto, and occasionally crowded with figures, deviated from his obsession not only with the observed world, but his observed world. The exhibition “Lucian Freud Portraits”, running at London’s National Portrait Gallery until May 2012, collects more than 100 works from museums and private collections – the first major show since the artist died on 20 July 2011, but in which he was involved until his death. It will perhaps be the culmination of his lifetime’s preoccupation with private faces in public places, and public faces in private places – for many of those he painted were never identified by name.

Fisun Giiner
Visions of Urban Apocalypse

#3 2011 (32)

Did Vorticism, that little-known British avant-garde movement that existed so briefly in the second decade of the 20th century, really deserve the major exhibition "The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World" (June 14 to September 4) at London's Tate Britain? Despite being Britain's first truly radical artistic move¬ment, it was, after all, held in such little regard after the World War I that it was all but forgotten for decades until the early 1950s. That was when the English art critic Herbert Read pub¬lished his seminal survey "Contemporary British Art", a book that championed the radicalism of British art. It was a publica¬tion that also gave the impetus for the Tate Gallery's 1956 exhi¬bition "Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism", placing the difficult and irascible Lewis at the helm of the movement - as Read had done - and exciting some interest in avant-garde circles.

Caterina Cardona
From Giotto to Malevich – “Mutual Admiration”

Special issue. ITALY–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

The “Scuderie del Quirinale” in Rome is presenting the first half of a major exhibition “From Giotto to Malevich – Mutual Admiration” that is a highlight of a joint programme “Russia and Italy: A Relationship over the Centuries”. The show, which from February 7 will be on display in Moscow at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, has been organised by major museums in both countries, with support from the Ministries of Culture and Internal Affairs of both Italy and Russia.

Alexander Burganov
The Albertina, Vienna:
Michelangelo and His Time

Special issue. ITALY–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

STEPPING INTO THE TWILIGHT OF A LARGE ROOM, IN WHICH THE ONLY ILLUMINATION COMES FROM SMALL SHINING WINDOWS, THE VIEWER INEVITABLY FEELS A SENSATION OF BEING INVITED INTO ANOTHER, UNEARTHLY, WORLD. "ANOTHER" IT MAY INDEED BE - BUT IN NO WAY AN UNEARTHLY ONE. THE WINDOWS CONCERNED ARE CHALK AND PEN SKETCHES WHICH ILLUSTRATE "MICHELANGELO UND SEINE ZEIT" (MICHELANGELO AND HIS TIME), NOW ON DISPLAY IN THE ALBERTINA MUSEUM IN VIENNA. THE OLD SHEETS OF PAPER IN SIMPLE CLASSICAL FRAMES SEEM TO SHINE FROM WITHIN WITH SOME MAGICAL, UNREAL, LIGHT. THEY ARE KNOWN TO BEAR THE TOUCH OF THE HANDS OF MANY OF THE GREATEST ARTISTS OF THE PAST: MICHELANGELO, RAPHAEL, LEONARDO DA VINCI AND OTHERS. IT IS THE INSPIRATION, NAME AND PERSONALITY OF EACH OF THEM THAT IS EVIDENT IN THESE ANTIQUE DRAWINGS MARKED WITH THE ARTIST’S PASSION, TENDERNESS OR DESPAIR. LABOURING ON THOSE SHEETS, THE MASTERS CONCERNED MAY HAVE BEEN CONVERSING WITH GOD – AND THE VIEWER FEELS IN SOME WAY, ALMOST INVOLUNTARILY, THAT THEIR HOLY MURMURS CAN BE OVERHEARD.

Tom Birchenough
Giorgio Morandi:
A Master of Stillness

Special issue. ITALY–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

The great Italian artist of the 20th century Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) received major renown in New York in Autumn 2008, with a landmark exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accompanied by a range of other shows at other galleries in the city. The largest retrospective in North America for the artist to date, it will move back, in a slightly adjusted format, to the artist’s hometown, Bologna, to be displayed at that city’s Museo d’Arte Moderna from January 22. It was in Bologna that the artist spent the greater part of his life, and where a museum dedicated to his memory occupies an honoured place in one of the city’s central town square buildings.

Valerie L. Hillings
RUSSIA! A TRUE BLOCKBUSTER

Special issue N2. USA–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

Even before its mid-September opening in 2005, RUSSIA! garnered a great deal of positive advance press in the United States. In its September issue, the fashion magazine Elle included this “stupendous exhibition” as #24 in its exclusive annual “Top 25” list.1 Vogue proclaimed that the show would make clear that between icons and abstraction, Russian art was far from a “Siberian wasteland.”2 To be sure, such articles were related to the predominance of Russian-inspired styles in the fashion industry’s fall lines, but they spread word of the show to these publications’ substantial readerships.

Natella Voiskounski
“They Dipped Their Brushes into Virtually Every Paint Can”

Special issue N2. USA–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

“Crossroads: Modernism in Ukraine, 1910–1930”, the firstmajor exhibition of early 20th century Ukrainian art was shown in Chicago at the Chicago Cultural Centre, and in New York at the new Ukrainian Museum. Featuring the best of high modernism from Ukraine, the exhibition included more than 70 rarely seen works by 21 Ukrainian artists; each of the works was shown for the first time in the United States. The avant-garde, art nouveau, impressionism, expressionism, futurism and constructivism movements were presented in a new light. Americans – the general public and art critics alike – were equally enthusiastic about the exhibition.

Tom Birchenough
Arshile Gorky:
A Summation Too Soon

Special issue N2. USA–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

More than 60 years after his early death, the work of Arshile Gorky continues to be reassessed: the last decade alone has seen the appearance of three new biographies of a figure who is now seen as one of the key forerunners of Abstract Expressionism in America, and a “bridge” between earlier European directions and the New World in the 1940s. A major retrospective exhibition of the artist opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in October 2009, before transferring to Tate Modern in London over the Spring, and will close this September at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles – by any standards, an impressive “tour” for such an artistic project.

Judith Flanders
The Ashcan Painters -
Masters of American Reality

Special issue N2. USA–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

An insulting term to dismiss a new type of art, a term that, in turn, becomes the positive identifier of that group, is by now a cliché. In 1874 a journalist in “Le Charivari” newspaper in Paris mocked a young artist named Claude Monet, who was exhibiting a painting called “Impression, Sunrise”: “Impression,” wrote the critic, “I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it ... and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.” Likewise, when a Donatello sculpture was placed in the same room as some contemporary painters at the 1905 Salon dÕAutomne, a critic mourned, “Donatello au milieu des fauves” – “Donatello surrounded by wild beasts” – and the term “Fauves” stuck.

Natella Voiskounski
RICHARD SERRA
STYLE IN STEEL

Special issue N2. USA–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

Richard Serra is undeniably a great name in contemporary art. Each of his installations or exhibitions is considered a major artistic event. Serra’s sculpture is associated with a certain laconism in form, as well as minimal plastic means aimed to reach the maximum of expression. His multi-tone self-supporting steel installations are the result of a new sculpturalmentality and reveal a novel semantics in sculpture.

Natella Voiskounski
Contemporary SMS-art
The 2008 Biennial at the Whitney Museum, NY

Special issue N2. USA–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

2008 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. This most important survey of the state of contemporary art in the USA today should by all means be of special interest for me – a representative of a country which has very little (or better to say no) experience in organizing such cultural events: 74 in the Whitney in New York against 2 in Moscow! Nevertheless the idea to make a comparison seemed real – each large-scale survey mirrors the most vivid tendencies common for the state of contemporary art in general. My expectations came true. As it was put by Donna de Salvo, the Whitney Chief Curator and Associate Director for Programmes: “The Biennial is a laboratory, a way of Ôtaking the temperatureÕ, of what is happening now and putting it on view… In dealing with the art of the present, there are no easy assessments, only multiple points of entry. For the Whitney, and for our public, we hope the Biennial is one way in.”

Judith Flanders
The Ashcan Painters –
Masters of American Reality

#2 2011 (31)

An insulting term to dismiss a new type of art, a term that, in turn, becomes the positive identifier of that group, is by now a cliché. In 1874 a journalist in “Le Charivari” newspaper in Paris mocked a young artist named Claude Monet, who was exhibiting a painting called “Impression, Sunrise”: “Impression,” wrote the critic, “I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it ... and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.” Likewise, when a Donatello sculpture was placed in the same room as some contemporary painters at the 1905 Salon dʼAutomne, a critic mourned, “Donatello au milieu des fauves” – “Donatello surrounded by wild beasts” – and the term “Fauves” stuck.

Tom Birchenough
The Glasgow Boys:
Artists at Home and Abroad

#1 2011 (30)

The exhibition “Pioneering Painters: The Glasgow Boys. 1880-1900”, which closed in the middle of January 2011 at London's Royal Academy, was the first show dedicated to the Scottish artistic movement to be held in more than 40 years. It brought attention back to a group that by around 1900 had become the most internationally-known direction in British art, one that flourished thanks to the adventurous patronage of BritainÕs second city, and rebelled against the traditional academicism that had preceded it. As with other artistic movements of the time in northern European countries, including Russia, the impact of France and Impressionism proved crucial.

Inessa Kuteinikova
Russia’s Artistic Orientalist History

#4 2010 (29)

The monumental exhibition of Russian Orientalist paintings from the principal museums of Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and Uzbekistan (with a small part from private collections in Moscow and London) continues the remarkable tradition of the Groningen Museum in the Netherlands in filling a longstanding gap – and filling it most satisfyingly – in researching lesserknown Russian themes and mounting a comprehensive and highly sophisticated exhibition. As we gaze at these impressive canvases in a European setting, we find ourselves confronted by an adapted genre brought back into the milieu of the original.

Anne Mannix
Andy Warhol. The Last Decade

#4 2010 (29)

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) was the final venue of the four-museum tour to present the first U.S. museum exhibition exploring the late works of the iconic American artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987). On view there from October 2010 through January 2011, more than 50 works revealed the Pop artistʼs energetic return to painting and renewed spirit of experimentation during the last decade of his life. This period shows Warhol in the midst of his celebrity creating more paintings and on a vastly larger scale than at any other moment of his 40-year career. Exhibition highlights include psychologically revealing fright wig self-portraits, three variations on Leonardo da Vinciʼs The Last Supper, and collaborations with younger artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat. Several of these works – assembled from national and international public and private collections, as well as the BMAʼs exceptional collection of late works by Warhol – were not exhibited until after the artistʼs death.

Ute Bauermeister
The Colours of Poetry Joan Miro at the Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden

#3 2010 (28)

The summer exhibition “Miro. The Colours of Poetry” at the Museum Frieder Burda (2 July to 14 November 2010) is dedicated to the artist Joan Miro, and shows around 100 works by the Catalan artist who so strongly influenced 20th century art. The pictures cover six decades of Miro’s work, and are drawn from various private collections and museums from all over the world. A large number of works owned by the Miro family itself are shown as well, a rarity in itself, while others come from the Fundacio Joan Miro in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca. The exhibition was curated by the worldwide expert on sculpture Jean-Louis Prat, a close friend of Miro who organized exhibitions for him during his lifetime, while the artist’s grandchild Joan Punyet Miro attended its opening.

Christine Hopfengart
The Zentrum Paul Klee: Meeting Place of Klee and Picasso

#2 2010 (27)

The Zentrum Paul Klee celebrates its 5 years with the exhibition “Klee meets Picasso” – an homage to two giants of art history, presenting these two imposing exponents of modern art and taking as its theme Klee's analysis of Picasso. The exhibition reveals unknown interwoven links between Klee and Picasso. It comprises over 180 works from the Zentrum Paul Klee, from numerous museums and private collections, such as famous collections in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum Picasso, Barcelona, the Museum Berggruen and the Neue National Galerie, Berlin and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The exhibition project is supported by the Picasso und Klee families.

Simon Оberholzer
Rolf Iseli. Layers of Time

#1 2010 (26)

The Museum of Fine Arts in Bern has devoted an important exhibition to Swiss artist Rolf Iseli, presenting paintings, objects, sculptures and prints that survey the artist´s 50 years of work. Arranged in thematic groups the works show the explosive energy of an outstanding artistic life – Iseli´s main subject is man and his natural environment.

Alexander Rozhin
The Bauhaus. Ideas for the Future

#4 2009 (25)

The large and most comprehensive retrospective entitled “The Bauhaus. A Conceptual Model” celebrates the 90th anniversary of the founding of this famous school of design, architecture, fine and applied art known for its reformatory ideas and aims and the international composition of its teachers and students. The exhibition opened in Berlin at the Martin-Gropius Bau, where it ran from 22 July to 4 October 2009, and can be seen at MOMA in January 2010 in New York. Organised by the joint efforts of German and American art historians, culturologists and archivists, this show represents the whole multi-sided heritage of the Bauhaus masters, their theoretical and practical experiments and discoveries. The scientifically argued concept of the organisers provides a rare opportunity to examine in detail a conflicting and complex evolution, the turning of a triad of geometrical figures and colours into a new aesthetics of artistic images, in architecture, the visual arts and design.

Michael Baumgartner, Carole Haensler
Paul Klee. Carpet of Memory

#4 2009 (25)

The exhibition "Paul Klee. Carpet of Memory',' which ran at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, brought to a thrilling conclusion the oriental "Grand tour" the Zentrum Paul Klee initiated with the exhibition "In Search of the Orient" and which leads visitors through time and space. The focus of this particular exhibition is the oeuvre of Paul Klee and the works that emerged from his trip to Tunisia in 1914 and Egypt in 1928, as well as his later exploration of a host of Orient-inspired themes. The exhibition also includes early Orient-themed photographs and examines the image of the Orient that photography helped to convey.

Jurgen Weichardt
Can the Future Be Defeated?

#2 2009 (23)

When the doors of the Giardini were opened for journalists on the first day of the 53rd Biennale of Venice, where traditionally the national pavilions present their artists, nearly all writers and photographers hurried, passing the pavilions of Switzerland, Venezuela, Russia, Japan and Germany to the British Pavilion, to take a place in a quickly growing queue… It was like in bad times, when there was something free on offer – this time tickets for a 30-minutes film by Steve McQueen. The number of visitors was limited, therefore one had to wait for days, if not following the queue.

Astrid von Asten
“Art is Arp”

#2 2009 (23)

“For Arp, art is Arp” – this proclamation made by Marcel Duchamp in 1949 arouses a curiosity to get to know Arp's understanding of art, presented at the exhibition in the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck.

Timo Valjakka
Kari Huhtamo: The Pure Joy of Meditation and Comprehension

#2 2009 (23)

Финский скульптор Кари Хухтамо – многоплановый художник, обладающий неиссякаемой энергией созидания. На протяжении многих лет его работы давали основания – как это ни парадоксально – для взаимоисключающих характеристик. И действительно, при анализе обширного творчества скульптора зачастую возникает ощущение, что ни одно определение само по себе не способно исчерпывающим образом определить суть его произведений. Хухтамо причисляли к художникам поп-арта, дадаистам, сюрреалистам, конструктивистам, мастерам кинетической скульптуры. В его работах присутствуют и мягкий юмор, и холодная элегантность, воплотившаяся в изысканных пластичных формах. Хотя Кари Хухтамо может считаться стопроцентным модернистом, его произведения убедительно свидетельствуют о том, что и в мощном потоке модернизма можно сохранить творческую индивидуальность. Осенью 2009 года в здании Третьяковской галереи на Крымском Валу и в «Выставочном зале в Толмачах» откроется экспозиция под названием «Variatio Arctica Sculptura» – первый в России показ творчества ведущего современного скульптора Финляндии.

Natella Voiskounski
Futurism and After: David Burliuk (1882–1967)

#1 2009 (22)

February 20 2009 marked the centenary of the publication of the Futurist manifesto, in which Marinetti denied past artistic traditions and expressed his passionate admiration for a new technological era with its emphasis on speed, industrialization, and changes in the style of life, with a resulting strong demand for new artistic forms, styles and media. “The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that does not have an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries!” Marinetti wrote. “What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed. …We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.”

Maria Burganova
Pierre Cardin and Alexander Burganov: An Artistic Dialogue

#4 2008 (21)

Sometimes it seems that the terrain of modern art fans out in so many directions that it is almost impossible to have a dialogue on the subject. The capacity to listen and the possibility of being heard have become quite rare.

Tom Birchenough
Giorgio Morandi: A Master of Stillness

#4 2008 (21)

The great Italian artist of the 20th century Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) received major renown in New York in Autumn 2008, with a landmark exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accompanied by a range of other shows at other galleries in the city. The largest retrospective in North America for the artist to date, it will move back, in a slightly adjusted format, to the artist's hometown, Bologna, to be displayed at that cityʼs Museo dʼArte Moderna from January 22. It was in Bologna that the artist spent the greater part of his life, and where a museum dedicated to his memory occupies an honoured place in one of the cityʼs central town square buildings.

Renate Ulmer
Russia 1900. Art and Culture in the Empire of the Last Tsar

#3 2008 (20)

Designed as both cultural and historical, the exhibition has the objective of presenting Russian art of the end of the 19th- early 20th century which is little known in Germany, in parallel with the Western European decorative and literary movement “Stilkunst” (The Art of Style). Its focus is on the unique Russian integration of various forms of art of the period along with the ideas and thoughts that inspired and nurtured them. The dialogue between traditional, folk and romantic works and those which demonstrate international and Modernist influences increases the diversity of the exhibition.

Tom Birchenough
Wyndham Lewis: Portraits of Friends - and Foes

#3 2008 (20)

Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a key figure of the English modernist movement in both painting and writing, acquainted with – both as friends and, often, enemies – with almost all key figures of the first half of the 20th century working in British culture. Best known as the founder and leading proponent of the pioneering modernist art movement Vorticism from 1914, his considerable legacy in another field, that of portraiture, was the subject of a major retrospective at Londonʼs National Portrait Gallery (NPG).

Ferdinand Hodler Р A Symbolist Vision

#2 2008 (19)

An unparalleled overview of Ferdinand Hodlerʼs work opened on April 9 2008 in the old building of the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, in rooms specially designed for the exhibition. This show is one of the most important and comprehensive of Hodler's exhibitions, with over 150 major works from all periods; it will remain there until August 10 2008. The exhibition was arranged in collaboration with the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, and offers a unique overview of Hodlerʼs work, clearly establishing the international significance of this Swiss painter. His large symbolist figure paintings are shown alongside his best landscapes. The exhibition is rounded out with his unique group of works dealing with the sick and dying Valentine Godé-Darel, his mistress, and with a selection of self-portraits.

Tom Birchenough
The Camden Town Group: British Art of the Early 20th Century Through the Prism of One Movement

#2 2008 (19)

The art of one of the more significant, if shortlived, British artistic movements of the early 20th century, the Camden Town Group, received a landmark retrospective at London's Tate Britain museum, which closed in May. It proved the first major exhibition for the movement in the British capital for 20 years.

Natella Voiskounski
Contemporary SMS-art The 2008 Biennial at the Whitney Museum, NY

#2 2008 (19)

I happened to be in New York in March this year and naturally did not miss a chance to visit the 2008 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. This most important survey of the state of contemporary art in the USA today should by all means be of special interest for me – a representative of a country which has very little (or better to say no) experience in organizing such cultural events: 74 in the Whitney in New York against 2 in Moscow! Nevertheless the idea to make a comparison seemed real – each large-scale survey mirrors the most vivid tendencies common for the state of contemporary art in general. My expectations came true. As it was put by Donna de Salvo, the Whitney Chief Curator and Associate Director for Programmes: “The Biennial is a laboratory, a way of 'taking the temperature', of what is happening now and putting it on view… In dealing with the art of the present, there are no easy assessments, only multiple points of entry. For the Whitney, and for our public, we hope the Biennial is one way in.”

Evgeniya Kikodze
The Venice Biennale: Thinking and Feeling Should Be in Unity

#4 2007 (17)

This year’s project for Venice was prepared against the backdrop of the apparent failure of the 2005 Biennale. In fact, at first, the well-known American art critic and artist Robert Storr, this year’s curator, had been offered the curatorship of the previous exhibition. However, there was not enough time left for preparations, and Storr declined the offer, passing it on to Rosa Martinez. This year, Storr had more time which he used effectively to express his views most fully and comprehensively.

INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA

Natella Voiskounski
A Journey of Architectural Discovery. “The Lost Vanguard” Exhibition: Russian Modernist Architecture 1922-1932

#4 2007 (17)

The exhibition of work by Richard Pare in New York’s Museum of Modern Art features one of the most immediate and tragic phenomena in the history of Soviet (and Russian) modernist architecture. The exhibition “The Lost Vanguard” highlights some 75 photographs by the architectural photographer Richard Pare, who has worked from 1993 to the present day, making eight extensive trips to Russia and the former Soviet republics and creating nearly 10,000 images to compile a timely documentation of numerous modernist structures, including the most neglected. The exhibition was made possible by the Russian Avant-garde Fund and Senator Sergei Gordeev, its founder and president.

Agnieszka Lulinska
“Russia’s Soul”. Germany, Bonn, 16 May – 26 August 2007

#3 2007 (16)

The exhibition series “The Great Collections” (Die grossen Sammlungen) is a highlight of the exhibition programme of the Art and Exhibition Hall of Bonn in Germany. It offers German viewers a chance to see part of the collections of some of the outstanding museums of the world, among them: in 1992 – the Museum of Modern Art in New York; in 1995 – the Museo Archeologico Nazionale from Naples; in 1997 – the Hermitage in St. Petersburg; in 1998 – the Musée du Petit Palais in Paris; in 1999 – the Prado in Madrid; in 2003 – the Imperial Collection from the National Palace Museum in Taipei, and others. Each exhibition was exclusively prepared for the Bonn exhibition halls and focused on the substantial highlights of each respective collection.

Natella Voiskounski
“They Dipped Their Brushes into Virtually Every Paint Can”

#3 2007 (16)

“Crossroads: Modernism in Ukraine, 1910–1930”, the first major exhibition of early 20th century Ukrainian art was shown in Chicago at the Chicago Cultural Centre, and in New York at the new Ukrainian Museum. Featuring the best of high modernism from Ukraine, the exhibition included more than 70 rarely seen works by 21 Ukrainian artists; each of the works was shown for the first time in the United States. The avant-garde, art nouveau, impressionism, expressionism, futurism and constructivism movements were presented in a new light. Americans – the general public and art critics alike – were equally enthusiastic about the exhibition.

Hermann Nitsch: “My work should be a school of life, of perception and feeling”

#3 2007 (16)

The MZM Museumszentrum Mistelbach opened on 24 May 2007 with the presentation of the Hermann Nitsch Museum, the largest museum in Austria dedicated to a single artist. The premiere show presented a comprehensive overview of the work of Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch in an exhibition space measuring 2,600 square meters, with a gallery complex with a total length of 61 meters.

Richard Serra. Style in Steel

#3 2007 (16)

Richard Serra is undeniably a great name in contemporary art. Each of his installations or exhibitions is considered a major artistic event. Serra’s sculpture is associated with a certain laconism in form, as well as minimal plastic means aimed to reach the maximum of expression. His multi-tone self-supporting steel installations are the result of a new sculptural mentality and reveal a novel semantics in sculpture.

Yekaterina Selezneva
Summer in Switzerland. Masterpieces from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art at Martigny. Hans Holbein in Basel

#4 2006 (13)

By lending 50 masterpieces of Western European art to the Fondation Pierre Gianadda the world-famous Metropolitan Museum is sending out a clear message: it trusts the foundation implicitly. The memory of the mysterious story (with a happy ending) when the collection of French paintings from Moscow’s Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts was arrested after the closure of the exhibition remains fresh in the minds of many. At the time, some Russian journalists and museum officials said in no uncertain terms that the Swiss partner did not quite live up to the standards of the Pushkin museum.

Art Against Terror

#4 2006 (13)

On September 11 2006 a monument to the victims of international terrorism “Teardrop of Grief” (“To The Struggle Against World Terrorism”) was unveiled at a solemn ceremony in the American city of Bayonne in New Jersey.

John E. Bowlt
“Vanguardias rusas” at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain, 2006

#2 2006 (11)

The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid opened a major exhibition of the Russian avant-garde at the beginning of 2006 (February-May), the first of its kind in the Spanish capital. Entitled “Vanguardias rusas” and based on works from the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, Russian regional museums and other public and private collections, the exhibition emphasized the interdisciplinary nature of Russian Modernism. Apart from major paintings, including, incidentally, Goncharova’s “Fishing” (1909) and Larionov’s “Baker” (1909) from the Museo Thyssen itself, the selection encompassed sculpture (including two Cubist pieces by Baranov-Rossine), book design (by Lissitzky and Stepanova), applied arts (including examples from the archive of the Decorative Institute, Leningrad, shown here for the first time), commercial design (such as movie posters by the Stenberg brothers), agit-propaganda (such as street art by Al’tman and posters by Klutsis), porcelain, textile designs and photography (including work by Ignatovich and Rodchenko), to mention just a fraction of this panoramic repertoire.

Alexander Rozhin
Engaged with Modernity

#2 2006 (11)

A personal exhibition of Max Beckmann (1884-1950), on show in the Old National Gallery in Berlin from December 2005 to March 2006, allowed many visitors to rediscover the universe of one of the brightest representatives of German art of the first half of the 20th century.

Tatiana Potapova
From Impressionism to Cubism
Russia – Japan

#1 2006 (10)

An exhibition of French Impressionist and Modernist artists from the collection of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts is currently being shown, with great success, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, and will later move to the National Museum of Art in Osaka. It was organized by the popular Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun which supports many cultural projects in Japan.

Tatiana Gubanova
The Passionate Dance of the Avant-garde

#1 2006 (10)

Museum of Modern Art in Rovereto (Trento province, Italy) opened an exhibition titled “The Dance of the Avant-Garde” on December 16, displaying paintings, scenography and costumes from Degas to Picasso, from Matisse to Haring. Over 1,000 paintings, sculptures, graphic works and photographs created in the 20th century introduce the viewer to the magical union of dance and the visual arts, and to the wonderful century of real-life and fantastic images.

Yekaterina Selezneva
Variations on the Theme of Melancholy

#1 2006 (10)

Those who initiated the exhibition “Melancholy: Genius and Madness in the West” that recently opened Yekaterina Selezneva at the Galleries Nationales du Grand Palais in Paris are sure that subjects invoked by and devoted to melancholy can be traced throughout the history of European art, from Antiquity to the present day. No other state of the human soul seems to have evoked so considerable interest among so many illustrious figures of the Western world over the centuries as this mood.

Valerie L. Hillings
RUSSIA! A True Blockbuster

#1 2006 (10)

Even before its mid-September opening, RUSSIA! garnered a great deal of positive advance press in the United States. In its September issue, the fashion magazine Elle included this “stupendous exhibition” as #24 in its exclusive annual “Top 25” list. Vogue proclaimed that the show would make clear that between icons and abstraction, Russian art was far from a “Siberian wasteland.” To be sure, such articles were related to the predominance of Russian-inspired styles in the fashion industry’s fall lines, but they spread word of the show to these publications’ substantial readerships.

Yekaterina Selezneva
The DADA Encyclopaedia

#1 2006 (10)

The Dada exhibition that opened on October 5 2005 in the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris was organized by the French National Museum of Modern Art together with the Washington National Gallery of Art and MoMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York). The exhibit will travel from Paris to Washington (February 19-May 14, 2006) and then to New York (June 16-September 11, 2006). Initially each of these institutions, both the Washington and Paris museums, started preparing a retrospective of the Dada movement independently. When the museums learned of their overlapping interests they decided to join forces and invite a third party – the newly renovated MoMA with its rich collection of Dada art.

Raya Zommer-Tal
Marcel Janco and the DADA Spirit

#1 2006 (10)

The Janco-Dada Museum can be found in the centre of the picturesque and peaceful artists’ village of Ein-Hod in the north of Israel; it opened to the public in 1983 at the initiative of friends and family of the artist Marcel Janco who wanted to establish a home for his work and ideas. The museum concentrates its activities in two main areas indicated by its name: the artist Marcel Janco and the Dada movement of which Janco was one of the founders.

Dr. Lisa Fischman
Desert Treasure

#1 2006 (10)

Russian artists, or as they are usually referred to “artists of Russian origin” – those who left Russia for good at the beginning of the 20th century, and won recognition and fame abroad and whose artworks are represented in almost all world-famous museum collections – no doubt constitute an invaluable part of the Russian cultural heritage. Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973), a renowned sculptor of the 20th century, is no exception. His bright extraordinary creative activity started in France and ended in the USA. In 1928, the outstanding Russian art critic Abram Efros called Lipchitz's sculptural work "the highest and most dominant point of the Russian intrusion" into the art of the West. Lipchitz became one of the most notable adepts and advocates of Cubism and he persistently applied Cubist principles in his works, gaining enthusiastic recognition from both connoisseurs and the general public. Over time Lipchitz drew back from the movement, though in his monumental and easel works continued to visualize expressive deformations of organic natural forms, boldly shifting flat planes, resulting in a structural angularity; later he came to a looser spatial play.

Valentin Rodionov
The Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis

#3 2005 (08)

In May 2006, the Tretyakov Gallery will celebrate its 150th anniversary. As the years pass, we find ourselves cons tant l y re turni ng to Pav e l Tretyakov and his vital role in the development of Russian art. A successful merchant and ent repreneur, Tre t yakov claimed that “assembling the Russian school, as it is today” was one of his life’s goals. 150 years later, we still remember Tretyakov with immense gratitude, such was his gift to society and future generations.

Natella Voiskounski
The Body. Art and Science

#3 2005 (08)

The exhibition “The Body. Art and Science” proved a major attraction in Sweden this Spring, with its eternal, allembracing search for a distinctive identity finding brilliant and eye-catching realization at Stockholm’s National Fine Arts Museum. Its curators and contributors to the catalogue (published in Swedish, with an English summary) included Torsten Weimarck, Merten Snickare, Eva-Lena Bengtsson, Ove Hagelin, Mens HolstEkstrum, Karin Siden, Ulrika Nilsson, Eva Ehren Snickare, Solveig Julich, and Ingela Lind. The two forewords to the catalogue were written by Solfrid Soederlind and Jan Lindsten. Generous contributions from museums and private collections from the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Great Britain, France, Poland and Denmark to the exhibition made the result a major international project.

Jurgen Weichardt
The Venice Biennale, 2005

#3 2005 (08)

To visit the Venice Biennale is always an adventure, given the atmosphere of the town defined by the sea, its canals and artistic and architectural jewels of the past. The festival of arts, which was originally situated only in the Giardini, has spread over the years throughout the city, growing to include exhibitions from more than 70 countries, while many shows from independent groups must find their place in the Giard-ini’s pavilions, or in palaces, churches and cultural centres.

Art|36|Basel

#3 2005 (08)

A prominent event in the art world in June was Art 36 Basel – a grandiose international art fair in which 270 galleries from all around the world represented over 1500 modern and contemporary artists whose “works do not cease to surprise, challenge and delight” viewers, according to Samuel Keller, director of Art Basel. Viewers are given a unique opportunity to purchase really outstanding works of art, whether classics of the 20th century or the most interesting works being created today. “Everything – for Sale!” This slogan turns every visitor to the Basel art fair into a potential buyer.

Alexander Rozhin
Uecker. A Pilgrimage to Another Reality

#3 2005 (08)

Twenty chapters, or twenty acts of an unfinished play about artistic life which the German artist Guenther Uecker is destined to complete have become a culminating event in Berlin’s cultural life from March to June 2005, alongside the exhibition “Nefertiti” in the Kunst Forum, and a celebration of the centenary of Albert Einstein.

Natalia Mamontova
Warsaw-Moscow / Moscow-Warsaw 1900-2000

#2 2005 (07)

"Warsaw-Moscow. Moscow-Warsaw. 1900-2000" will be the third in a series of exhibitions exploring artistic connections between Moscow and other European capitals. The first, "Moscow-Paris. Paris- Moscow" was held in 1979, and the second, linking Moscow and Berlin, in 1996. Work on the Polish-Russian exhibition began in the mid-1990s. In November 2004, the exhibition opened in the Polish capital. Now, "Moscow-Warsaw" has arrived at the Tretyakov Gallery on Krimsky

Paris "Vernissaqes"

#2 2005 (07)

Limited in number, and neither too extravagant nor too shocking - such are the Spring “Vernissages” in Paris - a long-established artistic centre of Europe, and a meeting point for internationally-renowned masters. The spring of 2005 proves no exception: a show of Klimt in the Musee Maillol; “Matisse. Une Seconde Vie. 1941-1954” in the Musee de Luxemburg; and “Neo-Impessionists. From Seurat to Paul Klee” in the Musee d'Orsay, to mention only the most impressive examples.

C.Cardona
From Giotto to Malevich

#1 2005 (06)

The “Scuderie del Quirinale” in Rome is presenting the first half of a major exhibition “From Giotto to Malevich – Mutual Admiration” that is a highlight of a joint programme “Russia and Italy: A Relationship over the Centuries”. The show, which from February 7 will be on display in Moscow at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, has been organised by major museums in both countries, with support from the Ministries of Culture and Internal Affairs of both Italy and Russia.

A.Burganov
Michelangelo and His Time

#4 2004 (05)

STEPPING INTO THE TWILIGHT OF A LARGE ROOM, IN WHICH THE ONLY ILLUMINATION COMES FROM SMALL SHINING WINDOWS, THE VIEWER INEVITABLY FEELS A SENSATION OF BEING INVITED INTO ANOTHER, UNEARTHLY, WORLD. "ANOTHER" IT MAY INDEED BE - BUT IN NO WAY AN UNEARTHLY ONE. THE WINDOWS CONCERNED ARE CHALK AND PEN SKETCHES WHICH ILLUSTRATE "MICHELANGELO UND SEINE ZEIT" (MICHELANGELO AND HIS TIME), NOW ON DISPLAY IN THE ALBERTINA MUSEUM IN VIENNA. THE OLD SHEETS OF PAPER IN SIMPLE CLASSICAL FRAMES SEEM TO SHINE FROM WITHIN WITH SOME MAGICAL, UNREAL, LIGHT. THEY ARE KNOWN TO BEAR THE TOUCH OF THE HANDS OF MANY OF THE GREATEST ARTISTS OF THE PAST: MICHELANGELO, RAPHAEL, LEONARDO DA VINCI AND OTHERS. IT IS THE INSPIRATION, NAME AND PERSONALITY OF EACH OF THEM THAT IS EVIDENT IN THESE ANTIQUE DRAWINGS MARKED WITH THE ARTIST’S PASSION, TENDERNESS OR DESPAIR. LABOURING ON THOSE SHEETS, THE MASTERS CONCERNED MAY HAVE BEEN CONVERSING WITH GOD – AND THE VIEWER FEELS IN SOME WAY, ALMOST INVOLUNTARILY, THAT THEIR HOLY MURMURS CAN BE OVERHEARD.

A.Rozhin
Edward Hopper: "Lux Americana"

#4 2004 (05)

Искусство Америки XX века, прежде всего, ассоциируется с именами Джексона Поллока, Класа Олденбурга, Энди Уорхола, Марка Ротко, Роберта аушенберга, Джеймса Розенквиста, Джор- джа Сигала – мастерами абстрактного экспрессионизма, поп-арта и гиперреализма. Вместе с тем художественная культура этой страны значительно богаче и разнообразнее. Как, например, среди живописцев минувшего столетия самыми американскими по духу, по технологии индивидуализма, на мой взгляд, являются Эдвард Хоппер и Эндрю Уайет. В правомерности подобного интуитивного ощущения лишний раз убеждаешься на ретроспективной выставке произведений Хоппера (1882–1967), открытой в залах галереи Тейт Модерн в Лондоне с 27 мая по 5 сентября нынешнего года.

F.MORRIS
BACK TO THE FUTURE

#3 2004 (04)

THIS ARTICLE IS TITLED `BACK TO THE FUTURE’ BECAUSE THE PROJECT OF BUILDING TATE MODERN WAS PROPELLED BY A VISION OF RETRIEVING AND REANIMATING THE ART OF THE RECENT PAST FOR AUDIENCES NOW AND IN THE FUTURE.

F.PIOVANO
TATE MODERN GALLERY
Facts and reflections based on an interview with the director Vicente Todoli

#3 2004 (04)

Modern and contemporary art have become more popular than ever that’s a fact. Audiences have increased so much that museums are now part of a kind of mass tourism, something that twenty years ago would have been unthinkable. It all started with the so called ‘blockbuster shows’. One of the first was the Tutankhamen exhibition in New York many years ago, followed by shows such as the Van Gogh, Picasso and many others. Nowadays exhibitions have to be marketed in a similar way as any other entertainment industry, like cinema or theatre for example. As state funding has generally speaking decreased, new museums depend more and more on outside funding and on revenue from tickets. That means that they have to go out into the world and employ the same tactics used by the commercial advertisement.

INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA

BERLIN-MOSCOW MOSCOW-BERLIN

A.ROZHIN
A Dispute on Art

#2 2004 (03)

IT WAS A LONG PROCESS OF ANXIOUS EXPECTATION RUNNING OVER ALMOST TEN YEARS TOWARDS THE EXHIBITION "BERLINMOSCOW. MOSCOW-BERLIN. 1950-2000". FINALLY CAME THE HAPPY MOMENT OF ITS OPENING, SEPTEMBER 28, 2003 WHICH TOOK PLACE IN THE CAPITAL OF THE FRG, IN MARTIN-GROPUIS-BAU. 500 WORKS BY 180 ARTISTS REPRESENTED NOT ONLY RUSSIA AND GERMANY, BUT ALSO SOME OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES AND AMERICA - IN ORDER TO DEMONSTRATE DIRECT PARALLELS BETWEEN THE EAST AND THE WEST.

H.GRIMMLING
Impressions from "Moscow–Berlin"

I, FOR ONE, CONSIDER THIS EXHIBITION TO BE A TRIP BACK INTO A LAND OF MEMORIES. THE LAST TIME I VISITED MOSCOW WAS THIRTY YEARS AGO: THE MOST VIVID REMINISCENCE OF THAT PERIOD IS MY SITTING IN THE BELORUSSKY RAILWAY STATION WAITING-ROOM, WITH ALL THE OTHER PEOPLE AND THEIR LUGGAGE CONSISTING OF CARDBOARD BOXES BRIMMING OVER WITH THEIR BELONGINGS. IT WAS NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE TO MOVE THROUGH THOSE CROWDS. THERE WERE PEOPLE EVERYWHERE; THEY EVEN SLEPT ON THE FLOOR. IT LOOKED AS IF THEY HAD BEEN AT THE STATION FOREVER.

J.WEICHARDT
No Winner, Or Loser in the Cold War

FROM THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL IN 1990, AND THE ERA OF PERESTROIKA, THERE IS AN ENORMOUS APPETITE IN GERMANY TO UNDERSTAND THE CULTURAL HERITAGE OF THE SOVIET UNION.

N.VOISKOUNSKI
Marc Ash “Tous Ensemble” One and All: A Story with no Finalem

#2 2004 (03)

The beginning of Spring marks the revival of life, but also makes us remember all those who were killed at the different fronts of World War II, and those who were turned into "dust and returned to Earth, whence they came", and whose spirits return to us to remind us about the Holocaust…

Alexandre I. Rozhin
SUNRISE OF THE ASIAN BIENNALES

#1 2004 (02)

It is more than natural to start any article on any international event in China with a quotation from Confucius: this piece on the First International Beijing Biennale is no exception. The famous Chinese philosopher and poet managed to formulate in his peculiarly Asian-Chinese paradoxical way the contradictory nature of some natural phenomena. He said: "Sometimes there are sprouts, but they do not blossom; sometimes they blossom, but bring no fruit". It hints at what fruit the First International Beijing Biennale might bring.

Natella VOISKOUNSKI
REALISM REVISITED

#1 2004 (02)

“In a school of fine arts, it is one’s duty to teach only uncontested truths, or at least those that rest upon the finest examples accepted for centuries." H. Flandrin’s words, are the closest we come to articulating a mission statement at The Florence Academy of Art. With Flandrin, and so many others we could quote, as our guides, we teach the craft of working in the realist tradition similarly to how it was taught in the 19th century ateliers of Western Europe – not so as to produce 19th century work, but because... our most direct link to the traditional values and teachings of the past, which are known to have produced professionallevel artists in the realist tradition, are through those studios. Because I picked up pieces ot the tradition from many different people, what we teach at the Florence Academy is a blend of what I received from many of those I mentioned earlier, necessarily interpreted in my own way.

Natella VOISKOUNSKI
EXPECTATIONS & DISILLUSIONS. 50TH BIENNALE DI VENEZIA

#1 2003 (01)

IT WAS MY FIRST "BUSINESS TRIP" TO VENICE, THOUGH I GUESS NO BUSINESS TRIP TO VENICE IS ONLY BUSINESS. THE IMPACT OF THE CITY IS SO GREAT AND HILARIOUS THAT YOU CAN’T AVOID THE MOST PLEASANT CONTACTS WITH THIS FAIRY-TALE, ALWAYS OVERCROWDED & BUSY PLACE AMIDST THE WATERS. I DID NOT WITNESS THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE BIENNALE, BUT NOW, HAVING VISITED ALL THE EVENTS, EXHIBITIONS AND PAVILIONS I DO BELIEVE MR. HOWARD JACOBSON WRITING "MY VENICE BIENNALE HELL" FOR THE GUARDIAN THAT THE PEOPLE PARTICIPATING IN THE OPENING CEREMONY WERE IF NOT MUCH MORE THEN AT LEAST NO LESS INTERESTING, ATTRACTIVE, FASCINATING AND SOPHISTICATED THAN THE EXHIBITION ITSELF. AS HE PUT IT: "ART IN QUANTITY – BLACK BOX, VIDEO, CAR-BOOT-SALE INSTALLATION ART - IS NOT A PRETTY SIGHT."

 

 

MOBILE APP OF THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY MAGAZINE

Download The Tretyakov Gallery Magazine in App StoreDownload The Tretyakov Gallery Magazine in Google play