Displaying items by tag: figurative

Another veteran of the McKee, Philip Guston, joined in 1974, when his shift from Abstract Expressionist to figurative canvases, filled with bean-shaped heads, rogue limbs and light bulbs, was controversial. David and Renée McKee helped steer a reappraisal of Guston’s late work — now revered by artists and critics — after his death in 1980.

News of the gallery’s closing brought out a rush of suitors courting the Guston estate, which has just selected Hauser & Wirth to handle its representation worldwide.

Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots is a sensational exhibition – grand, exhilarating and so unexpected as to make the painter’s career look altogether different. It brings together nearly half of the semi-figurative Black Paintings from the early 1950s. This would be unique enough – they haven’t been shown together since Pollock’s death, drunk at the wheel of his Oldsmobile in 1956 – but here they appear among a tremendous selection of paintings from every period, to reveal a startling continuity between the figurative and the abstract in Pollock’s career.

In another sign of the market’s bubbling strength, Christie’s announced it will offer Alberto Giacometti’s life-size bronze “Pointing Man (L’Homme au Doigt)” from 1947 on May 11 in New York, along with an unpublished estimate in the record-breaking region of $130 million. Of the six works in the famed edition, as well as one artist proof, this example is believed to be the only one that is hand-painted by the artist. Five of the six in the edition are tucked away in museums or private foundations, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London. Only two are left in private hands.

“Pointing Man,” standing 69 7/8 inches tall and bearing a crusty patina, as if charred by the horrific aftermath of the Second World War, reaches out with his spindly right arm, while his left remains raised at shoulder height, as a fencer might guardedly stand before an opponent.

Los Angeles certainly knows how to throw a party. But never is it more obvious than in the week leading up to the Academy Awards, when its party-throwing prowess is on full display. There are soirées by "Vanity Fair," the Weinstein Company, and Bulgari—one can easily find herself invited to four or more fêtes in one evening alone. The art world of LA is no exception; in fact, why wouldn't dealers capitalize on the likelihood of having Sir Elton John or Ingrid Sischy swing by, say hello, and support an opening night shindig even if only for a 15-minute drive-by en route to another celebration?

Gagosian Gallery is the master at availing itself of the big guns visiting LA during this high-flown week; the last four years, the art world monolith has brought forth fantastical openings by Urs Fischer, Richard Prince, and Taryn Simon (also known in LA environs as Gwyneth's sister-in-law). This year, Gagosian gives us figurative painter John Currin, opening Thursday, February 19, with his first solo show in LA in nearly a decade.

London’s Royal Academy of Arts announced that it will present the first survey of California modernist Richard Diebenkorn’s figurative and abstract works to a UK audience in nearly twenty-five years. Diebenkorn, who rose to fame as the west coast ambassador of Abstract Expressionism, and later, helped establish the Bay Area Figurative movement, oscillated between abstract and representational painting during his sixty-plus-year career. Today, he is widely recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the post-war era. 

“Richard Diebenkorn” explores the three distinct phases of Diebenkorn’s career, beginning in the early 1950s, when Abstract Expressionism was gaining traction in New York.

A rare collection of African art assembled over nearly 30 years by a leading Genentech biochemist will go on display at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park in late January, marking the first time the public has seen many of the carved forms and shapes.

The collection, "Embodiments: Masterworks of African Figurative Sculpture," was assembled by scientist Richard Scheller, who was taken by African art's "amazing forms," but fascinated when he began to learn what the sculptures represent.

Sculptures by the two artists featured here in temporary presentations at Storm King Art Center this year couldn’t be less alike. A single Minimalist piece by the New York sculptor Virginia Overton is gracefully fitted to the landscape of gently rolling hills. Six monumental, figurative sculptures by Zhang Huan of Shanghai are ponderously theatrical.

Ms. Overton’s untitled piece is a straight, nearly 500-foot length of brass tubing about four inches in diameter elevated four feet above the ground by thin rods. From a valley between low hills, it follows an upward slope to its peak and then disappears over the other side.

Like perfect pitch in music, drawing remains the skill by which artistic talent is measured.

Minneapolis Institute of Arts visitors can see how 100 different artists have drawn over the past 500 years and then step into the museum’s own studio and try their hand at sketching a still life, the human figure, or whatever springs to mind. The museum has even unearthed some plaster casts of antique sculpture that can be copied, as students once did in art school.

The DIY room is the playful wrap-up to “Marks of Genius: 100 Extraordinary Drawings,” an important show of impressively varied drawings, watercolors and pastels from the museum’s collection. Running through Sept. 21, the exhibit anticipates the museum’s 100th birthday next year and will travel to museums in Grand Rapids, Mich.; Raleigh, N.C., and Omaha after it closes in Minneapolis.

The Whitney Museum of American Art and The High Line, New York City’s elevated, linear park, have announced a public art collaboration that will launch in July. The long-term project will kick off with the installation of an enlarged digital print of Alex Katz’s painting “Katherine and Elizabeth” (2012) on the North-facing wall of a residential building at the southern end of The High Line. The work has never been shown publicly.

Katz, a celebrated figurative artist, has worked closely with the Whitney for 40 years. The museum hosted a solo show of the artist’s prints in 1974 as well as the first major retrospective of his work in 1986. Katz has also been involved in a number of public art projects, including an installation at New York’s RKO General building in 1977, a commission for Chicago’s transit authority in 1984, and a collaboration with the Art Production Fund in 2010 that involved replacing advertisements atop New York City taxicabs with images of his artwork.