Displaying items by tag: nudes

During the culturally repressive late-16th and 17th centuries, Spanish kings often secreted away their nude paintings in rooms known as “salas reservadas,” where they could enjoy them in private.

Eventually, these works made it out into the open and, in 1830, into a gallery at the Prado Museum in Madrid, where they remain among the finest of that institution’s holdings.

The Parrish Art Museum will debut an extensive survey of the photography of Chuck Close, one of the most important figures in contemporary art, opening this Sunday, May 10 with a reception at 11 a.m.

On view through July 26, the exhibition will feature some 90 images from 1964 to the present, showcasing an arc of the artist’s exploration of photography— from early black and white maquettes to monumental composite Polaroids and intimately scaled daguerreotypes and his most recent Polaroid nudes. The exhibition explores how Mr. Close has stretched the boundaries of photographic means, methods and approaches.

Christie's auction house has announced it will offer a 1955 masterpiece by Pablo Picasso for an estimated $140 million.

"Women of Algiers (Version O)" will hit the auction block on May 11.

The vibrantly colorful work features a scantily attired female amid smaller nudes. It is part of a 15-work series Picasso created between 1954 and 1955.

The Courtauld Gallery is presenting the first major museum exhibition in over 20 years of one of the 20th Century’s most exceptional artists, Egon Schiele (18901918). A central figure of Viennese art in the turbulent years around the First World War, Schiele rose to prominence alongside his avant-garde contemporaries, such as Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka. He produced some of the most radical depictions of the human figure created in modern times, reinventing the subject for the 20th Century. The exhibition charts Schiele’s short but transformative career through one of his most important subjects – his extraordinary drawings and watercolors of male and female nudes.

"Egon Schiele: The Radical Nude" concentrates on the artist’s drawings and watercolors. It brings together an outstanding selection of works that highlight Schiele’s technical virtuosity, highly original vision and uncompromising depiction of the naked figure.

The wife of photographer Jean-François Bauret has accused Jeff Koons of copying one of her husband's works for the sculpture "Naked" (1988). Bauret died in January 2014 and was particularly known for his nudes.

The sculpture is an edition of three and part of Koons's "Banality" series. It is included in the catalogue for his current retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. However, according to the museum, it was not placed on view in the show due to slight damage it experienced during transport. An edition of the work sold at Sotheby's New York for $9 million in May 2008, according to the artnet Price Database.

A collection of 548 photographs taken by Edward Weston and printed posthumously by his son Cole Weston — the only person Weston authorized to print from his negatives — will be auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York on Sept. 30. The house is estimating that the prints, which are being sold in a single lot, may bring as much as $3 million.

Weston began his career as a photographer in the first decade of the 20th century and produced about 1,400 images over the next four decades. His best-known and most striking work includes stark black-and-white images, desert landscapes, nudes, and inanimate objects like trees, rocks and shells, which in his photographs often look like sculpture.

A monograph of the work of William Glackens, one of the founders of the Ashcan School and member of the 20th century American artist group, The Eight, will be published by Skira Rizzoli this year. The illustrated volume will feature some of Glackens’ most celebrated works including paintings previously unknown to the general public, nudes, portraits, still lifes, street scenes and landscapes. The monograph will also include scholarly essays that will explore Glackens’ relationship with French painting, his interest in fashion and costume, his depictions of women, and his work as an illustrator.

The monograph will accompany a retrospective of Glackens’ work, which will be held at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY from July 27, 2014 through October 13, 2014. The exhibition is being co-organized with the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and the Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale and will include approximately 75 works from private collections and public museums across the U.S. The show will be the first major retrospective of Glackens’ work in over fifty years.

Paul Cézanne’s (1839-1906) The Large Bathers is currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The work, which is on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is being exhibited alongside the MFA’s own Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903).

 The Large Bathers, painted in France between 1900 and 1906, is considered one of the most ambitious of Cézanne’s many works exploring the theme of nudes in a landscape. Serene and idyllic, the painting was left unfinished at the time of Cézanne’s death.

 Gauguin’s Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?, which was painted between 1897 and 1898, also features nudes in a landscape, but as means to illustrate the inevitable passing of time. Upon its completion, Gauguin said, “I believed that this canvas not only surpasses my preceding ones, but that I shall never do anything better – or even like it.” Gauguin attempted suicide after finishing the painting but was unsuccessful.

 Exhibited together for the first time in Boston, Large Bathers and Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? bridged the gap between art of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. In doing so, Cézanne and Gauguin influenced a generation of modern artists including Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954).

 The two paintings will be on view at the MFA through May 12, 2013.

Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997), a key figure in the 1960s Pop Art movement, is best known for his bright, comic book-esque images. The Tate Modern hopes to shed light on Lichtenstein’s less iconic works with a retrospective that will be opening February 21, 2013 in London.

Lichtenstein: Retrospective will feature 125 paintings, sculptures, and rarely seem drawings from the artist’s career that spanned more than fifty years. Organized by Tate Modern and the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate’s is the largest Lichtenstein show since the Guggenheim’s 1993 retrospective when the artist was still alive.

Works on view will include Lichtenstein masterpieces such as Look Mickey (1961), Whaam! (1963), and Drowning Girl (1963). The Tate’s inclusion of Lichtenstein’s early and late works will offer patrons a glimpse of the artist’s entire oeuvre. Visitors might be surprised by Lichtenstein’s early abstract expressionist paintings or his later foray into art nouveau-inspired sculptures, Chinese landscapes, and female nudes. For an artist who is associated with a very particular style, Lichtenstein led a surprisingly wide and varied career.