Displaying items by tag: Paris

The Centre Pompidou in Paris sent a number of French masterpieces to Shanghai’s Power Station of Art for the exhibition Electric Fields: Surrealism and Beyond – La Collection du Centre Pompidou, which opened on December 16. The show marks the first collaboration between the Pompidou, a leading museum of modern and contemporary art, and a Chinese institution.

The exhibition, which is part of the Shanghai Biennale, features approximately 100 works from the Pompidou’s collection including works by Rene Magritte (1898-1967), Andreas Gursky (b. 1955), Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), and Ed Ruscha (b. 1937). The show is divided into six categories that explore various Surrealist themes and includes paintings, sculpture, video and manuscripts.

The show’s title is a combination of two influences – the name of the venue, a former electric power station, and Andre Breton (1896-1966) and Philippe Soupault’s (1897-1990) seminal piece of Surrealist literature, The Magnetic Fields (1919). The exhibition runs through March 15, 2013 in Shanghai.

After twelve years at the helm of the world’s busiest museum, Henri Loyrette announced that he will leave his post at the Musée du Louvre in April of 2013. Before becoming the president and director of the Louvre, Loyrette served as the first curator and then the director of Paris’ Musée d’Orsay from 1994 to 2001 and has served as France’s chief curator of heritage since 1975. Loyrette has already informed the president of France, François Hollande, and the country’s minister of culture of his departure.

The Louvre attracts more visitors each year than any other institution in the world and Loyrette has managed to keep that number on the rise. In fact, the number of visitors has almost doubled under Loyrette’s leadership; 5.1 million patrons were reported in 2001 and by the end of 2012, almost 10 million people will have visited the Louvre this year.

However, Loyrette did much more than increase attendance during his time at the Louvre. He is responsible for implementing the museum’s contemporary art program and has organized exhibitions by Cy Twombly (1928-2011), Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945), and many other renowned modern artists. Loyrette employed a new policy that relied on crowd-sourced fundraising and launched a number of successful public campaigns that asked art enthusiasts to help the museum make important acquisitions. Loyrette also oversaw the opening of the Louvre’s outpost in the northern city of Lens as well as the expansion of the museum’s Islamic art galleries, which opened earlier this year.

Loyrette will no longer be in charge when the Louvre’s outpost in Abu Dhabi opens. The controversial project stirred debate in the French art world as Abu Dhabi has paid nearly $1.3 billion to use the Louvre name for thirty years and to gain access to the museum’s collection during that time. Designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, the Abu Dhabi location is slated to open in 2015.

Now in its 58^th year, the Brussels Antiques and Fine Art Fair (BRAFA) will take place January 19-27, 2013 at the exhibition space, Tour & Taxis. Featuring 128 dealers from 11 countries, the fair will present works from the Middle Ages to the 20^th century including antiquities, jewelry, furniture, ceramics, drawings, engravings, Old Master as well as modern paintings, sculpture, textiles, contemporary art, photography, and much more.

After drawing in 46,000 visitors last year, BRAFA organizers have made a number of adjustments in hopes of surpassing 2012’s numbers. There will be 26 new exhibitors present and an increased emphasis has been placed on pre-Columbian art; archaeology; primitive arts; 17^th to 19^th century furniture; 19^th to 20^th century paintings, sculptures, and drawings; Asiatic arts; 20^th century decorative arts; and modern and contemporary art. BRAFA has also added a new section to this year’s fair devoted to manuscripts. Exhibitors in this section include Signatures (Paris), Librairie Thomas-Scheler (Paris), and Sanderus Antiquariaat (Ghent, Belgium).

In honor of the fair’s tenth year at Tour & Taxis, BRAFA’s architects, Volume Architecture, have designed an extraordinary entrance inspired by Byzantine architecture, particularly that of the mosques in Istanbul.

VIP guests will be given a sneak peek of the impressive fair at BRAFA’s exclusive charity event on January 18. A silent auction will be held during the evening and proceeds will benefit the Merode Foundation to support its work on educational and social projects in Brussels’ working class neighborhoods.

Exhibitor highlights include Whitford Fine Art (London), which specializes in French and British 20^th century painting and sculpture, Leysen Jewelers (Belgium), jewelers to the Belgian royal family, and Guy Pieters Gallery (Paris/Belgium), a leading force in the contemporary art world for the past 30 years.

Winslow Homer (1836–1910), one of the foremost figures in American art, is well known for his sea scenes and marine paintings. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Homer was an avid traveler and spent time living and working in New York City, Paris, and England, among other places. However, during his years in Prout’s Neck, Maine, Homer produced some of his most defining masterpieces.

Homer moved to Maine in 1883 and spent most of his time working in his studio, a former carriage house, just 75 feet from the ocean. Homer remained in Prout’s Neck on his family’s property until his death in 1910. Homer’s paintings from this period are defined by their crashing waves, rocky coasts, and his expert use of light; they are also the subjects of two current exhibitions.

The Portland Museum of Art’s show, Weatherbeaten: Winslow Homer and Maine, focuses on Homer’s connection with his Prout’s Neck studio, which the museum now owns. The paintings on display feature the ocean views Homer saw from his home as well as the burly fishermen and statuesque women he often focused on. The exhibition’s range of paintings illustrates Homer’s transition from more populated works to stripped-down paintings that include just sea and land; Homer’s personal life followed a similar evolution.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is also hosting an exhibition of Homer’s work titled, Shipwreck! Winslow Homer and ‘The Life Line.’ The show is based around the museum’s own painting and Homer’s greatest success, The Life Line (1884), which features a woman being saved from the tumultuous sea by an anonymous hero. Shipwreck! Focuses on Homer’s changing relationship with the sea and includes tranquil marine paintings as well as bleaker scenes.

Weatherbeaten will be on view at the Portland Museum of art through December 30. Shipwreck! ends up its run at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on January 1, 2013.

Bulgarian-born artist, Christo, is best known for his large-scale artworks that transform their environments. Working with his late wife, Jeanne-Claude, Christo draped Berlin’s parliament building, the Reichstag, in metallic-colored fabric (1995); completely wrapped Paris’ oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, in 450,000-square-feet of golden material (1985); and surrounded 11 islands in Florida’s Biscayne Bay in pink fabric (1983).

The artist’s next endeavor is expected to be the world’s biggest permanent sculpture and will cost approximately $340 million, making it the most expensive as well. The structure, which will be built in the desert of Al Gharbia, 100 miles from Abu Dhabi, is a flat-topped pyramid that will stand 492 feet tall. The sculpture, titled The Mastaba, will be made out of 410,000 oil barrels painted in various colors inspired by the yellow and red sands of the desert, which will create the effect of an Islamic mosaic.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude conceived the idea for The Mastaba over 30 years ago, but were derailed by the Iran-Iraq war, among other things. Working with Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the representative of Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Christo financed the project through sales of his own works and funds from various investors.

The Mastaba, which will take about 30 months to complete, will be Jean-Claude and Christo’s only permanent large-scale work.

Paris’ Musee du Louvre and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which includes the Legion of Honor and the de Young Museum, announced that they have reached a mutual agreement and will collaborate on a series of exhibitions and exchanges. The institutions will share works from their incendiary collections over the course of the next five years including antiquities, paintings, decorative arts, prints, drawings, textiles, and sculptures.

The Louvre and Fine Arts Museums have been working on the arrangement for the past two years and will celebrate its commencement with the exhibition, Royal Treasures from the Louvre: Louis XIV to Marie-Antoinette. The show, which opened on November 17 and features a collection of decorative arts from the French monarchy, will be on view through March 17, 2013.

The agreement will allow each world-renowned institution to broaden their international reach and inhabitants of each city will have a new selection of masterpieces to view. Loans between the museums may include entire exhibitions or single objects.

Next fall doors will open to Paris’ Parsons the New School for Design for the second time. Frank Alvah Parsons, who founded the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (now Parsons), initially opened a French branch in 1921. The Paris location closed temporarily during World War II and when Parson merged with the New School for Social Research in 1970, the Paris branch was included. The New York and Paris campuses continued to grow apart until their association was no more than a technical one. In 2010 the Paris institution changed its name to the Paris College of Art and the New School could return to Paris using the Parsons moniker.

The new campus will be announced on November 29 at the Palais de Tokyo. Located on the Rue Saint-Roch, the Paris School of Art and Design will accommodate 300 to 500 students, who will be able to begin their studies there or in New York. Parson also has associated campuses in Shanghai and Mumbai. The school will offer bachelor’s and master’s programs in multiple art disciplines, fashion, design, and business.

For the second time in two years, Paris' musee du Louvre, Atlanta's High Museum of Art, Bentonville, Arkanas' Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Chicago's Terra Foundation will join forces to promote American art history education. The collaboration, which launched last year, was conceived in 2007 after the High's exhibition Louvre Atlanta, the product of a collection-sharing agreement with the French institution.

This installation of the four-year collaboration will focus on American genre painting of the 19th century, specifically how artists associated with the movement depicted day-to-day life at a time when America was still coming into its own. The exhibition, titled American Encounters: Genre Painting and Everyday Life, will open at the Louvre on January 17, 2013 and travel to the Crystal Bridges Museum in May and then to the High Museum in September. Featured paintings include Arthur Fitzwilliam Tate's The Life of a Hunter: A Tight Fix (1856) from Crystal Bridges, Eastman Johnson's Negro Life at the South (circa 1870) from the High Museum, and George Caleb Bingham's The Jolly Flatboatmen (1877-78) from the Terra Foundation. The Louvre's contributions, a painting by the Dutch artist Jan Steen and one by Englishman William Mulready, will explore the European influence on American genre painting.

Last year's inaugural exhibition focused on American landscape painting and featured works by Asher B. Durand and Thomas Cole. It is currently wrapping up its run at the High Museum ending January 6, 2013.

The publisher and art critic, Christian Zervos, founded the French art review, Cahiers d’Art, in 1926. The magazine ran without interruption from 1941 to 1943, until 1960 and featured artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Leger, Ernst, Calder, and Giacometti. Known for its striking layout and abundant photography, Cahiers d’Art also featured reviews written by the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Samuel Beckett. After being out of production for more than fifty years, Cahiers d’Art has been reborn.

Swedish collector and entrepreneur, Staffan Ahrenberg, bought the dormant publication after he walked by the still-operating Cahier d’Art gallery along the rue du Dragon in Paris. Ahrenberg re-launched Cahiers d’Art with former Art Basel director Sam Keller and the renowned curator Hans Ulrich Obrist as editors. The first issue features Ellsworth Kelly, Cyprien Gaillard, and Sarah Morris. As in the past, Cahiers d’Art will not contain advertisements nor will it follow a regular production schedule.

Major art world players including Larry Gagosian, Guggenheim boss Richard Armstrong, and Alfred Pacquement of the Pompidou Centre gathered in a tiny Left Bank gallery in Paris to celebrate the review’s return.

The International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC) starts today in Paris and runs through Sunday, October 21. One of the largest forums for contemporary artists, galleries, and dealers, the FIAC encompasses a number of events across the city at the Grand Palais, the Louvre Museum, the Tuileries Gardens, and various other locations.

The Grand Palais portion of the FIAC is held on two floors and features 182 dealers of modern and contemporary art from around the world. Last night’s preview, which is considered a litmus test of the art market’s strength, hosted a number of notable sales. Joan Miro’s Surrealist abstract Peinture (Le Cheval de Cirque) (1927) was sold by Helly Nahmad Gallery (New York) for $8 million and Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale, Attese (1967–68) was sold by Paris’ Tornabuoni Arte for $2.36 million.

A number of high-profile collectors were in attendance including French billionaires Francois Pinault and Bernard Arnault, U.S. collector Alberto Mugrabi, and Turkish collector, Omer Koc. If the preview is any indication of the how the fair will proceed, it should be any exciting next few days in Paris.