Displaying items by tag: prints

The Peabody Essex Museum is presenting the largest U.S. exhibition of Joseph Mallord William Turner's maritime paintings.

"Turner & the Sea" features more than 100 works spanning the 50-year career of one of Britain's most celebrated painters. Encompassing oils, watercolors, prints and sketches from the 1790s to the mid-1800s, this first full-scale examination of Turner's lifelong attraction to the sea follows the artist's evolution from precocious young painter to one of the most important, controversial and prolific masters of his art. Dramatic and roiling, sunlit and cloudstruck, the power of Turner's glorious canvases changed the maritime aesthetic and influenced countless painters hundreds of years after his time.

The University Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has received a gift of six original never-before-exhibited Andy Warhol prints from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

All with Warhol’s recognizable style and focus, the prints represent a period of the artist’s work from the late 1970s to mid-1980s, not long before the Warhol’s death in 1987 at the age of 58. The prints depict a range of subjects, from fashionable portraits to popular culture, and include such iconic images as Warhol’s portrait of friend and fellow artist Joseph Beuys and his striking representation of Lakota chief Sitting Bull.

The Morgan Library & Museum announced today that it has completed the digitization of its entire collection of Rembrandt etchings: nearly 500 images of works by the Dutch master are now available online. According to the Morgan, “Rembrandt used the process of etching to test concepts and themes, and the digitized works offer the opportunity to explore up-close his use of line, shading, and subject matter.” The prints feature Biblical scenes, self-portraits, and depictions of the Dutch countryside and society in the artist’s day (including both beggars and art patrons).

The Morgan holds in its collection most of the roughly 300 known etchings by Rembrandt, including rare, multiple versions (hence the discrepancy in number of etchings versus number of images). Their digitization is part of a larger effort by the museum “to expand access to its holdings,” says the press release. This includes the digitization of over 500 music manuscripts begun in 2010 and the ongoing digitization of the institution’s collection of nearly 12,000 drawings.

No one saw the depraved underbelly of post-war Weimar-era Germany as surely as Otto Dix.

His famous triptych Metropolis set dismembered veterans alongside bourgeois revellers and femme fatales.

A year later, in 1928, came the dehumanised, androgynous Portrait Of The Journalist Sylvia von Harden, a masterpiece currently held in Paris.

But it is a series of 50 prints titled Der Krieg (The War), made ten years after the beginning of the First World War, whose unerring focus is pertinent as the world commemorates the centenary of the start of machine-led, industrial-scale killing.

Acquavella Galleries in New York is currently hosting the exhibition “Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing: Works from the Schorr Family Collection.” The show was curated by Fred Hoffman, who was introduced to Basquiat by fellow art dealer Larry Gagosian in 1982. Hoffman helped Basquiat produce five editions of prints, which were published in 1983 by New City Editions in Venice, California. Hoffman also assisted in the production of the artist’s 1984 silkscreen paintings and co-curated Basquiat’s retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum in 2005. He is the Ahmanson Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

“Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing” features 22 works on paper and two paintings from the collection of Herbert and Lenore Schorr, Los Angeles-based collectors who met the artist in 1981, before his first exhibition in New York. The Schorrs quickly became Basquiat’s devoted collectors, supporters, and friends. While the couple owns several seminal Basquiat paintings, what makes their holdings so unique is their vast collection of works on paper. Hoffman said, “The Schorrs astutely understood that working on paper was equally central to his practice as painting on canvas. The collection demonstrates both the focus and ambition that the artist invested in the medium of drawing.” Drawing is an essential component of Basquiat’s graffiti-inspired Neo-expressionist and Primitivist works. Between 1980-1988, the artist produced approximately 1,000 works on paper that exemplify his frenetic, bold, and gestural style.

The two paintings on view at Acquavella Galleries include a portrait that Basquiat painted of the Schorrs and “Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits,” which was part of an exhibition at Fun Gallery in New York in 1983. The show didn’t receive any critical attention and the Schorrs were the only people to buy a painting. “Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits” is now considered a foremost example of Basquiat’s work. Lenore Schorr said, “We had so much confidence in him from the beginning and couldn’t understand why other people couldn’t see it.”

Today, Basquiat, who died in 1988 at the age of 27, commands extremely high prices at auction. In May 2013, “Dustheads” sold for $48.8 million at Christie’s, setting the record for Basquiat at auction. His work is included in private and public collections throughout the world, including the Broad Art Foundation in California, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Museu d’art Contemporani de Barcelona in Spain, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Acquavella Galleries was founded by Nicholas Acquavella in 1921. The gallery initially specialized in works of the Italian Renaissance, but in 1960, when Acquavella’s son William joined the business, the gallery expanded to major works of the 19th and 20th centuries, including masters of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. The gallery has since expanded and the entire scope of the 20th century is now represented.

“Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing: Works from the Schorr Family Collection” will remain on view at Acquavella Galleries through June 13.

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, announced that it will use a series of gifts totaling approximately $4 million to expand its photography initiatives. The museum, which is home to the most comprehensive photography program in the American Southeast, began acquiring photography in the early 1970s. The High’s holdings include American works from the 20th and 21st centuries, images made in and of the South, and the most significant grouping of vintage Civil Rights-era prints in the country. 

The most substantial gift has been promised by Donald Keough, the former president and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, and his wife, Marilyn. The couple, who helped fund the museum’s 2005 expansion, will donate $2 million to endow a permanent curatorial position in photography and support ongoing photography programs and acquisitions at the institution. Lucinda W. Bunnen, an Atlanta-based photographer and avid collector, has donated an unspecified amount that will go to the establishment of a photography gallery. Bunnen is a longtime supporter of the High’s photography initiatives and previously donated prints by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Chuck Close, and Cindy Sherman to the museum. Paul Hagedorn, an Atlanta-based artist and supporter of the High since 2005, has donated $500,000 for acquisitions and the Yellowlees Family, also longtime supporters of the museum, have donated $400,000 for the acquisition of Southern photography.

Michael E. Shapiro, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. director, said, “These landmark gifts represent a transformational moment for photography at the High. Photography is our fastest growing area of collecting, research and programming, and these gifts will ensure that the High can continue our commitment to new scholarship and commissioning new works by living artists. We hope that these significant gifts inspire others to support our photography programs and the growth of our collection.”

To commemorate its 20th anniversary, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has reinstalled its permanent collection. This is the first time the institution has reimagined its holdings since it opened to the public in 1994. The Warhol’s collection, which includes paintings, photographs, sculptures, prints, and films by the Pop artist, has been hung chronologically across five of the museum’s seven floors. Well-known masterpieces will appear alongside rarely seen artworks and archival material when the galleries open to the public during a gala event on May 17.   

Eric Shiner, director of The Warhol, said, “We can’t wait to share the new look and feel of The Warhol with our visitors. Our goal is to both engage and educate our guests so that everyone leaves with a true understanding of who Andy was and why he matters so much. To keep the content fresh, the curatorial team will rotate artworks in all galleries on a frequent basis. It will be a fun experience and definitely worth a visit if you haven’t been to the museum in a while.”

The museum’s seventh floor will present artworks and objects that explore Warhol’s relationship with his hometown of Pittsburgh. Works on view include newly uncovered material relating to Warhol’s childhood and pieces from his family’s collection of rare paintings and photographs.

The gala in May will kick-off a year-long celebration at the museum, which is the most comprehensive single-artist museum in the world.

The New York City Department of Records and Information Services has added 30,000 historical photographs to its extensive online gallery. Among these images are over 2,000 photographs from the NYPD departmental files and Emergency Services Unit, dating from 1928 to 1941. The images depict everything from a plane crash in Brooklyn to Communist Party rallies in Madison Square Garden, a Nazi summer retreat in Long Island, and John F. Kennedy’s ticker-tape parade from the 1960 presidential campaign. The online gallery now boasts 90,000 photographs, the largest collection of New York City historical images in the world.

The never-before-seen pictures were scanned from vintage large-format film and glass-plate negatives, color transparencies, century-old lantern slides, 35mm Kodachromes, and prints in the Municipal Archive. The city plans to eventually digitize its entire collection. 

The photographs can be viewed here.

This fall, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will present a monumental exhibition devoted to Henri Matisse’s cut-outs. Late in his career, Matisse developed his cut-out technique, which involved cutting organic shapes out of painted sheets of paper and arranging them into lively compositions on his studio’s walls. The process gave Matisse a renewed sense of freedom and he lauded the technique for its immediacy and simplicity, which he believed helped him express his artistic urgencies more completely.

“Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs” will be the largest and most extensive presentation of these unique works. The exhibition will present approximately 100 cut-outs -- borrowed from public and private collections around the world -- alongside a selection of related drawings, prints, illustrated books, stained glass, and textiles.

MoMA’s own Matisse cut-out, “The Swimming Pool,” recently underwent a multi-year conservation effort and will serve as a centerpiece of the exhibition. The cut-out, which was composed specifically for Matisse’s dining room in his apartment in France, was acquired by MoMA in 1975 and has been off view for over 20 years.

“Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs” will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art from October 25, 2014 through February 8, 2015.

The Portland Art Museum in Oregon is the only U.S. venue for "Venice: The Golden Age of Art and Music." The show focuses on La Serenissima" or "the most serene," the period between the early 16th century and the fall of the Venetian Republic at the end of the 18th century that was defined by a surge in artistic innovation. During this time, music and art flourished thanks to painters such as Tintoretto, Canaletto, and Guardi, as well as composers such as Willaert, Gabrieli, Monteverdi, and Vivaldi.

Organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition is the first to explore the important interrelationships of the visual arts and music in Venice's civic ceremonies, festivals, and culture. The show will present 108 objects from 38 lenders including paintings, prints, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculptures, original period instruments, and early music texts. Period music will be audible in the galleries to create a more comprehensive visitor experience.

 "Venice: The Golden Age of Art and Music" will be organized by theme. Sections will include -- Basilica of San Marco, which will explore Venice's center of religious devotion; Civic Pageantry, which will look at the many festivities and processions held throughout the year in Venice; The Scuole and The Ospedali, which will explore the impact that schools and hospital orphanages had on art and music in Venice; Musicians and Concerts, which will look at the impact and importance of music in the city; Popular Music; and Mythology and Opera.  

 "Venice: The Golden Age of Art and Music" will be on view at the Portland Art Museum through May 11, 2014.