Displaying items by tag: commission

The Louvre has commissioned Zeng Fanzhi to create a new work taking Eugène Delacroix's masterpiece "Liberty Leading the People" (1830) as inspiration. The resulting painting, entitled "From 1830 to Now, No. 4," now sits next to Delacroix's original at the Louvre, creating a compelling visual dialogue between past and present, East and West.

The Chinese auction darling is the second living Chinese artist whose work has been displayed amongst classic masterpieces at the Louvre.

The New York Studio School’s Whitney Studio in Greenwich Village has been designated a “National Treasure” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, according to an announcement from the organization today. The building was constructed in 1877 as a carriage house but was converted by art patron Getrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1907 into a studio and salon.

The Whitney Studio’s ornate interior was designed by Robert Winthrop Chanler, whom Whitney commissioned in 1918. Today, the structure and its decorative elements are badly in need of repair and restoration, with the New York Studio School estimating the cost of the project at $2.2 million.

Just months after Tom Finkelpearl left the Queens Museum to become New York City’s cultural affairs commissioner, the museum has selected a new president and executive director.

Laura Raicovich comes to the Queens Museum from Creative Time — which commissions and presents public art projects — where she has served as the director of global initiatives since 2012.

Rembrandt couldn’t decide whether to depict a rich man who commissioned a portrait standing up, or on his horse. And when he did determine how to show the wealthy gentleman, on horseback, he painted over the original image of the “sitter” standing up. Both portraits appear when the painting is x-rayed. Was canvas so expensive, or did Rembrandt not want a mere commissioned picture crowding out the personal works in his studio?

Nicolas Poussin admired the art of antiquity, which came down to him (and to us) mostly as sculpture. This may be why Poussin’s The Triumph of Pan seems like a sculptural frieze in paint, an odd paradox of permanence and perpetual movement.

The Flemish Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens and the beautiful Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia, the sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, shared an artistic vision in service of the Catholic faith. In the 1620s, Eugenia commissioned Rubens to create 20 massive tapestries celebrating the Catholic Church through vivid allegorical scenes.

Those tapestries usually are at the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales (Convent of the Barefoot Royals) in Madrid, where they are rarely seen by the public. But that will change Oct. 14, when they go on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum as part of the exhibition "Spectacular Rubens: The Triumph of the Eucharist."

On October 20, 1984, the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain opened its doors in Jouy-en-Josas, offering visitors a pioneering, visionary approach to exhibition-making and engaging artists with its radical, free-spirited attitude to art. Thirty years later, its track record is impressive: over 100 exhibitions have been hosted on its premises and more than 800 artworks have been commissioned – which have since entered the Foundation’s collection and testify to its unique views on patronage. In honor of the occasion, over a period of almost one year, artists will occupy and animate the space with creations that represent all that the Fondation Cartier stands for: creation and discovery, openness to multiple disciplines, progressive voices and ideas.

YBA Douglas Gordon is set to collaborate with pianist Hélène Grimaud on a large-scale commissioned piece that will debut in the Park Avenue Armory’s 55,000-square-foot drill hall on December 10 and run through January 4. A “monumental installation and performance piece” titled “tears become … streams become … ,” the piece is inspired by water and brings a giant pool of the stuff into the armory.  Grimaud is set to activate the space with nighttime performances of water-inspired works by composers including Debussy, Ravel, and Liszt from December 9 through 21, while a player piano will play during the day.

Contemporary art is about to take over luxury retail enclaves on the eastern seaboard.

On September 18, Deborah Kass will unveil 39 banners and one billboard — commissioned especially for high-end shopping strip The Street in Chestnut Hill, MA — as part of a series of outdoor exhibitions and public art installation project presented by WS Development and Art Production Fund.

The banners will depict many of Brooklyn-based Kass’s iconic works, such as "C’mon Get Happy," "Forget Your Troubles," "Sweet Thing," "We Will Be Young Forever" and "Let The Sunshine In" — letting her signature punchy, abstract expressionist style flank the center’s public areas.

The "Self Portrait" by Rubens that graces the Rubens House is being restored. Visitors wishing to view the painting should do so by 7 September 2014; after that, the painting will travel to the National Gallery in London for restoration. The work will return in 2015 for the exhibition "Rubens in Private: The Master Portrays His Family," after which it will resume its usual place in the gallery.

Rubens’ "Self Portrait" is one of the Rubens House’s most notable paintings. It is of iconic value to Antwerp and rarely leaves the museum. The painting will soon be restored for the upcoming exhibition "Rubens in Private: The Master Portrays His Family," which offers a glimpse of Rubens as his family’s portraitist. The works are the most beautiful and intimate portraits the master ever created. They were painted not on commission, but out of love, and served primarily as keepsakes. In 2015 these breathtaking works of art will be displayed together for the first time in the place where they belong: Rubens’ former home in Antwerp.

Photographer Louise Lawler will be the next artist to fill the billboard located at the base of the High Line -- New York’s elevated, linear park. The image, which depicts a room at Sotheby’s that contains works by Minimalist and Conceptual art icons Frank Stella, Sol Lewitt, and Donald Judd, is the 15th installation in the High Line’s billboard series. Other artists who have participated in the public art project include the Conceptual artist John Baldessari, photographer Robert Adams, and the British artist David Shrigley.

In the early 1970s, Lawler began looking critically at the ways in which art was displayed outside of the artist’s studio. She began photographing other artists’ works on view in collectors’ homes, in storage spaces, and on view at auction houses, challenging the viewer to think about the context in which works of art are displayed and documented.