The Harvard Art Museums will present five distinct exhibitions this summer, featuring works drawn from a diverse range of geographic regions and time periods, including Imperial China, 14th- to 17th-century Iran and Central Asia, 19th-century Iran, pre- and post-revolutionary America, and contemporary America. While showcasing the diversity of the museums' collections, these exhibitions will present new research and scholarship and will encourage discussion about artists, artistic practice, culture, and collecting.
August 2017 Art News
The October Revolution of 1917 changed the course of world history; it also turned Russia into a showcase filled with models. Every object and sphere of activity had to demonstrate how society could be remade according to revolutionary principles. It would take intensive experimentation and discussion to determine the shape of this unprecedented society. To be realized in any concrete way, communism had to be modeled and put on display.A rotating program of Soviet cartoons and documentaries is shown in a space that evokes an agit-prop train.
Deeply engaged in art history, Andrew Lord (British, born 1950) uses traditional ceramic forms and techniques that reference 19th- and 20th-century painting and sculpture. “In the 1970s,” Lord recalls, “I looked at paintings in Amsterdam and Paris and discovered Gauguin’s ceramics, which seemed to have meaning in a way I’d not seen before in ceramics.” Like Gauguin, Lord straddles the boundaries of fine art and craft, abandoning the functionality and practicality of his objects in favor of conceptual pursuits.
Featuring over 120 paintings, drawings, and historical documents related to the artist, Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil is a rare opportunity to experience the artist’s work, which is held mostly in Brazilian collections.
In an exhibition opening March 11, The Phillips Collection presents a major survey of drawings and “drawing paintings” by George Condo (b. 1957). An extraordinarily prolific painter, Condo is best known for his existential humor and unhinged pictorial inventions. His works synthesize disparate stylistic elements ranging from 17th century Venetian and Dutch painting through 20th-century Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art into singular works of art. Condo coined the phrases “Artificial Realism” and “Psychological Cubism” to describe this process.
“Jim Chuchu’s Invocations” opens at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art Wednesday, June 21, and will remain on display until June 24, 2018. The museum is the first institution to acquire and display Kenyan multimedia artist Jim Chuchu’s mesmerizing suite of video projections, Invocation: The Severance of Ties (2015) and Invocation: Release (2015). The exhibition is located in the museum’s Points of View Gallery.
During its annual Member’s meeting last week the Delaware Art Museum announced that it acquired 61 works of art by 37 artists over the last 18 months. New acquisitions include five costume studies by Howard Pyle for the play Springtime, an embroidered tunic and matching shoes by Pre-Raphaelite artist Marie Spartali Stillman, a large-scale painting by painter Peter Williams, and two sculptures for the Copeland Sculpture Garden. The works date from 1856 through 2016 and include photographs, paintings, prints, drawings, illustrations, sculptures, and decorative arts.
Richard Cleaver is a Baltimore-based artist who creates elaborate figurative sculptures full of hidden compartments to capture the lives and secrets of historical figures and personal acquaintances. The artist is fascinated by monarchies, mythology, and religion, and these themes form the subjects of his work.
‘A massive explosion of energy – full of life, colour and optimism’ – Damien Hirst. This is how Damien Hirst described his Spin Paintings. Hirst first started experimenting with spin art in 1992 at his Brixton studio and the works’ elongated lines stretching out to the edge of the painting embody energy, life and a refreshing sense of optimism.
Chiswick Auctions is privileged to offer for sale an exceptionally rare 17th Century embroidered painting as lot 76 in FINE CHINESE PAINTINGS on 15 May 2017.
