Displaying items by tag: western art

The Oklahoma City Museum of Art is the opening venue for the national tour of “Gods and Heroes: Masterpieces from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris.” Opening June 21, the blockbuster exhibition is organized by American Federation of Arts and the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. The exhibition chronicles the history of one of Europe’s most celebrated and influential art academies, while showcasing a stunning array of French masterpieces. With works that span more than two centuries, the exhibition will provide visitors an intimate view of an institution that produced some of France’s most accomplished artists and left a profound impact on Western art.

“The legacy of the École des Beaux-Arts cannot be understated,” said Oklahoma City Museum of Art President and CEO, E. Michael Whittington. “Until World War II, Paris was the center of the art world, and generations of American artists made their pilgrimage to study at the École. To have this great collection with its star-studded cast of artists now coming to the United States is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the people of Oklahoma.”

Since it opened to the public in 1822, the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis has been one of those quiet gems, set in a 17th-century classical townhouse in the center of this patrician city and frequented by lovers of Dutch Golden Age painting. But when it closed for a renovation and expansion two years ago, and a selection from its collection went on tour, Mauritshuis gained an instant celebrity it had never had before.

Wherever the paintings went, millions of people followed, enduring long lines to see two works in particular: Vermeer’s doe-eyed “Girl With a Pearl Earring” (circa 1665), which has become one of the most famous paintings in Western art, and Carel Fabritius’s “The Goldfinch” (1654), a mere slip of a work — about 13 inches by 9 inches — but a giant hit because of Donna Tartt’s best seller of the same title. Also in that show was a sampling of works by Rembrandt and Rubens, Hals and Steen, but they were just the icing on top.

On Sunday, December 1, Sotheby’s wrapped up Beijing Art Week, a series of sales that marked the company’s first commercial auction in mainland China. The auction house offered $212 million worth of western and Chinese art, jewelry and furniture in three private sales and an auction.

During the Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art auction on Sunday night, a record was set for Chinese-French artist Zao Wou-Ki. the artist’s 1958 oil-on-canvas abstract work, which was sold by the Art Institute of Chicago, brought $14.7 million. Wou-Ki’s previous record was set on October 5 during a sale at Sotheby’s Hong Kong when a work sold for $11 million.

China is home to the fastest growing art market and the success of the Beijing sales indicates that there are active buyers on the mainland.

On November 3, 2013 the High Museum of Art in Atlanta will present the exhibition Go West! Art of the American Frontier from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Through more than 250 paintings, sculptures, photographs and Native American artifacts, the show will explore the changing notion of the American West, which evolved considerably between 1830 and 1930. The exhibition also addresses the varied and oftentimes conflicting representations of Native Americans, which ranged from portrayals of fierce warriors to menacing enemies.

The works included in Go West! Are on loan from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a museum and cultural center in Cody, Wyoming. Highlights include a bronze sculpture by Frederic Remington, illustrations by N.C. Wyeth created during his time as a ranch-hand, and Annie Oakley’s rifle.

Go West! will be on view at the High Museum through April 3, 2014.

Washington’s Tacoma Art Museum broke ground Thursday, September 5, 2013 on a $15.5 million expansion that will include new galleries. The 16,000-square-foot wing will house 280 works of Western art donated to the museum by German billionaires Erivan and Helga Haub. The collection, which ranks as one of the finest groupings of Western American art in the world, was accompanied by a $20 million gift from the Haubs.

The Tacoma Art Museum’s expansion, which is helmed by the Seattle-based architect Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig Architects, is slated to reach completion by fall 2014. The institution will boast the most significant public holding of Western artworks in the Pacific Northwest. The Haubs’ bequest includes landscapes by Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, sculptures by Frederic Remington and works by modernist painters including Georgia O’Keeffe. The pieces range from the 1820s to the present and span various Western art genres.

The Denver Art Museum has received a significant gift from local collector Henry Roath who has pledged to donate approximately 50 artworks by masters of the American West including Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran and Frederic Remington to the museum’s Petrie Institute of Western American Art. Roath’s collection, which is considered one of finest private collections of western American art in the country, focuses on art of the American southwest, especially works from members of the Taos Society of Artists. Roath has also donated $500,000 to the museum in an effort to establish a fund for future acquisitions.

The works that make up Roath’s gift range in date from 1877 to 1972 and include oil paintings, watercolors and bronze sculptures. Highlights include Thomas Moran’s Snowy Range, an 1896 landscape painting of the Grand Tetons, and two casts of Frederic Remington’s seminal sculpture Bronco Buster. The Roath collection is currently on loan to the museum and will remain on view in two of the institution’s western American art galleries.

Roath said, “I want the collection to be accessible to the public. The Denver Art Museum has made a strong commitment to art of the region and has a bold program. I’m excited for visitors and the public to be able to experience the masters of the American West firsthand.”

The Rijksmuseum in The Netherlands has purchased one of the earliest depictions of America in the history Western art. Discovery America by the Dutch Renaissance painter Jan Mostaert (circa 1475—1555/56) was created between 1525 and 1540 and features a made-up scene of Spanish aggressors firing cannons and rifles at indigenous people who are armed with bows and arrows.

Discovery America, which is also known as Episode from the Conquest of America, was one of 202 paintings returned to the daughter-in-law of Jacques Goudstikker, a Jewish art dealer whose collection was plundered by the Nazis. Following World War II, the painting was displayed in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem until Goudstikker’s heirs demanded that the work be handed over to the family in 2006. Goudstikker’s daughter-in-law approached the Rijksmuseum about purchasing the painting earlier this year. Nathan and Simon Dickinson Gallery, which has headquarters in New York and London, brokered the sale. The gallery had brought the painting to the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht in March where they asked $14 million for the masterpiece.    

Discovery America’s importance is bolstered by the fact that it is one of the oldest Dutch paintings mentioned in the definitive Dutch art history book, Het Schilder-boeck from 1605.

The Minneapolis Museum of Arts acquired a rare Renaissance bust of St. John the Baptist yesterday, May 8, 2013. Created by the Italian sculptor Benedetto da Rovezzano (1474-1554), the terracotta bust was one of the works handpicked by Hitler to appear in his Führermuseum, which never came to fruition. The institution was expected to house a massive collection of the most important works of Western Art in the historical canon.

Rovezzano’s bust was bought from Theresia Willi Lanz by Hitler’s special representative, Hans Posse, who was in charge of traveling across Europe seizing important works from Jewish art collectors and buying them from non-Jewish collectors. After the Führermuseum was never realized, the bust was hidden along with a number of important works by Leonardo da Vinci (1542-1519), Vermeer (1632-1675), and Michelangelo (1475-1564) in a salt mine in Austria. As it became clear that the Nazis would not win World War II, Hitler’s officials called for the destruction of the mine. However, the miners from the Austrian town wished to keep their livelihood intact and worked to save the mines and the art inside by removing inactivated Nazi bombs and setting them off through controlled explosions within the tunnels of the mines, saving the salt and the art but making them inaccessible. The bust was ultimately returned to the Netherlands.

Rovezanno was one of the most prominent sculptors during the high Renaissance and his bust of St. John the Baptist is well known among Renaissance experts. Created in Florence during the time when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael (1483-1520) were working there, the bust is the earliest Renaissance sculpture in the Minneapolis Institute’s collection. The bust of St. John the Baptist will go on view in the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts permanent galleries alongside other renowned Renaissance busts by Agostino Zoppo (circa 1520-1572) and Giovanni Battista Caccini (1556-1613).

American pop artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987) brought $380.3 million in sales in 2012, exceeding Chinese ink painter Zhang Daqian (1899-1983) as the world’s highest seller at auction. Warhol also surpassed modern master Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Gerhard Richter (b. 1932), who holds the record for top living artist at auction.

Warhol’s all-time sales reached $2.9 billion while Picasso, who is regarded as the world’s costliest artist at auction, hit $5 billion. Picasso’s total auction sales for 2012 were down to $334.7 million from $366 million. Officials blame lack of supply for the dip in Picasso sales; while works by Picasso remain in demand, there are currently fewer exceptional pieces on the market. Daqian took an even harder hit than Picasso, slipping from $782.4 million at auction to $241.6, most likely the result of the economic and political uncertainty that pervaded China in 2012, which affected the international demand for Chinese art.

The restructuring that occurred last year knocked Daqian from first to fourth place in terms of selling power, a reflection of the increased demand for western postwar and contemporary works in the art market. A testament to contemporary art’s dominance, auctions in that category raising a record $1.1 billion in November 2012 through sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips de Pury & Co.

Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925 opened on December 23 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and celebrates the bold art movement that swept across mediums and continents during the first half of the twentieth century. Severing ties with the realistic, practical images that dominated western art, abstraction infiltrated everything from sculpture and painting to poetry, music, and film.

Inventing Abstraction brings together over 350 works including paintings, stained glass, needlepoint, film, sculpture, and illustrated books. Organized by Leah Dickerman, a curator in MoMA’s painting and sculpture department, and Masha Chlenova, a curatorial assistant, the show includes many pieces that are on loan from outside museums.

Inventing Abstraction features works by Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), and many others. While extremely comprehensive, the exhibition draws connections between artists and illustrates the development of abstraction over time.