Displaying items by tag: René Magritte

It’s a collection that includes artworks by Andy Warhol, Claude Monet, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock, Alberto Giacometti, Willem de Kooning, René Magritte, and many others. It has been valued at approximately $3 billion. And since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran most of it has been in storage. That’s about to change.

The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is set to put on a stunning exhibition filled with Western works acquired by Iran’s former Empress Farah Diba Pahlavi, many of which have not been so boldly displayed since she and her late husband, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, were deposed in the revolution that severed relations between Iran and much of the West. Under the empress’s direction, Iran purchased the works at a time when the global art market was depressed and Iran’s coffers were full of oil revenue.

The Baltimore Museum of Art today announced it recently added René Magritte’s 1967 sculpture "Delusions of Grandeur" to its renowned collection of modern art. This monumental bronze was created by the Belgian artist during the last year of his life and there are very few casts. The work came to the BMA as a gift of National Trustee Sylvia de Cuevas and is the first sculpture by Magritte to enter the collection. It will be displayed, beginning this week, in a gallery with works by Magritte’s contemporaries: Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, André Masson, and Joan Miró.

“We are thrilled to welcome this remarkable sculpture into the BMA’s celebrated collection of modern art,” said BMA Director Doreen Bolger. “This imaginative artwork so well represents Magritte’s unique vision and is sure to become one of the most memorable artworks on view here.”

The new year has got off to a good start in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen with the return of three traveling masterpieces from the collection. Last year almost one million Americans enjoyed the Rotterdam Magrittes in New York, Houston and Chicago. The works by René Magritte (1898-1967) can be seen in an updated hanging of the outstanding Surrealism collection.

After a journey of more than a year the museum is celebrating the homecoming of three works of art with a rehang of the Surrealist rooms. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen took the unusual step of lending the paintings to the major Magritte exhibition in MoMA, the Menil Collection and the Art Institute of Chicago.

The 7-foot-tall sculpture of two feet at Chicago’s Oak Street Beach has legs.

That is, it’s expected to move to other locations around the city as long as the Art Institute of Chicago is hosting an exhibit inspired by René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist artist. The beach installation is a larger-than-life marketing campaign to bring attention to the Magritte exhibit at the Art Institute.

The feet, each of which is 800 pounds and made of plywood and carved foam with a urethane hard coat, were installed at Oak Street Beach.

A nicely suited man slips a hand into a trouser pocket and tilts his head toward the gramophone. His coat is slung over a nearby chair beside a suitcase. He seems to be savoring a few final bars before taking his leave, an exit that seems unrushed.

Beyond his view, two bowler-hatted men lie in wait, one with a net, the other a club. Just behind him, a woman lies naked, eyes closed and blood raining from her mouth. There it is — the inevitable bit of bloodletting in the otherwise bloodless, tidy paintings of Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte.

This is the potency of Magritte's popular, endlessly reproduced and much underestimated works, enigmatic paintings that inspired the green apple on the Beatles' record label, the bottle-filled sea in the title credits for HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" and any number of book covers on psychology, among many other pop culture riffs.

The Louvre’s new outpost in Abu Dhabi, which is slated to open in December 2015, will showcase highlights from its collection during an exhibition in France in May. “Birth of a Museum” will include over 160 objects and will give visitors a glimpse of the museum’s impressive collection as well as demonstrate the project’s cultural and architectural significance.

Louvre Abu Dhabi’s collection, which includes everything from ancient to contemporary artworks, has been gradually growing since 2009. “Birth of a Museum” will present a rare Greek archaic sphinx, an Italian brooch from the 5th century AD, and paintings by Edouard Manet, Rene Magritte, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, and Cy Twombly. A similar exhibition was held in Abu Dhabi from April 22 through July 20, 2013, at a gallery on the island of Saadiyat, close to where construction for the new museum is underway.

Louvre Abu Dhabi, which was designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, aims to be  a place of conversation between civilizations and cultures. Works on view will be drawn from French collections as well as the museum’s own holdings.

“Birth of a Museum” will be on view at the Louvre in Paris from May 2 through July 28.

The Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art that took place at Sotheby’s London on June 19, 2013 garnered $165.9 million, surpassing its high estimate of $164.3 million. The auction, which featured 71 works, sold 81.7% by lot and bidders hailed from 33 countries around the world.

The sale’s top lot was Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) painting of Venice, Le Palais Contarini (1908), which sold for $30.8 million after a three-way bidding battle. Other highlights included a Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) painting in the artist’s quintessential palette titled Red, Yellow and Blue (1927), which was scooped up by a telephone bidder for $14.5 million and Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866-1944) Bauhaus-era work on paper Ineinander (1928). A number of Surrealist works fared well at the sale including Max Ernst’s (1891-1976) La Horde (1927), which sold to New York’s Acquavella Galleries for $3.2 million and René Magritte’s (1898-1967) L’Idee, which features one of the artist’s well-known floating green apples and brought $7.1 million.

Helena Newman, Chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department in Europe, said, “There was an extraordinary dynamic at play in the sale room. Established collectors – drawn out by the quality of the estate collections presented in the sale – competed with many of the new contender’s in today’s market. Record levels of participation were driven by a truly global audience.”

The evening auctions continue at Christie’s London on June 25, 2013 with its Post-War and Contemporary Art sale.

A major step has been taken in the Menil Collection’s master plan to create a “neighborhood of art” on their 30-acre campus. The Houston museum has chosen landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh to helm the expansion, which consists of the construction of six buildings dedicated to art, an outdoor sculpture park, bungalows, and green spaces spread across several blocks. Van Valkenburgh, who has offices in Brooklyn, NY and Cambridge, MA, has redesigned Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House (Washington, D.C.), Brooklyn Bridge Park (New York), Hudson River Park (New York), and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston). The London-based firm David Chipperfield Architects is directing the Menil’s overarching expansion plan, which includes the creation of new green spaces, walkways, visitor amenities, and gallery buildings.

Renzo Piano designed the Menil, which was founded by collectors John and Dominique de Menil, in 1987. The museum houses the de Menil’s comprehensive collection of 20^th century art, which includes works by René Magritte (1898-1967), Man Ray (1890-1976), Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and Mark Rothko (1903-1970). The museum also includes a separate gallery dedicated to Cy Twombly (1928-2011), which was also designed by Piano.  

The first phase of the renovation is expected to kick off in September 2013.

An exhibition organized in collaboration with Houston’s Menil Collection and the Art Institute of Chicago will open on September 28, 2013 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Magritte the Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938 is the first exhibition to focus on the pioneering Surrealist artist René Magritte’s formative years.

Beginning in 1926, Magritte embarked on a quest to “challenge the real world,” which concluded in 1938, just before the outbreak of World War II. Featuring 80 works including paintings, collages, and objects, the exhibition touches on the varying concepts Magritte explored during this time including displacement, transformation, metamorphosis, and representation.

The exhibition, which will be on view through January 12, 2014, will also include a selection of photographs, periodicals, and a number of Magritte’s early commercial works in an effort to convey the artist’s budding identity.

The Louvre’s new outpost in Abu Dhabi, which is slated to open in 2015, has assembled the 130 paintings, miniatures, sculptures, and other artworks that will form its permanent collection. Museum officials allowed reporters a sneak peek of the works including paintings by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Rene Magritte (1898-1967), Édouard Manet (1832-1883), and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903). The entire collection will be on view from April 22 to July 20, 2013 as part of the exhibition The Birth of a Museum at a gallery on the island of Saadiyat, close to where construction for the new museum is currently underway.

Louvre Abu Dhabi’s collection is comprised of numerous works from private collections, many of which have never been on public view before. Highlights from the museum’s holdings include Picasso’s gouache, ink, and collage work on paper Portrait of a Lady (1928); Gauguin’s Children Wrestling (1888); and Paul Klee’s (1879-1940) Oriental Bliss (1938).

The Louvre’s new venue, which was designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, is the museum’s first branch outside of France. The venture is expected to bring the Louvre and its French partner museums approximately $1.31 million over 30 years. The Louvre also has an offshoot location in the northern city of Lens.