Sunday 30th January 2011Vorticists Get their Chance to Shine in Italy. Peggy Guggenheim Collection
David Bomberg, The Mud Bath, 1914. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Tate, London. Purchased 1964. Image © Tate.
For all that the Vorticist movement was aggressive and explosive in its own time, history has not looked upon it with such fervour. Overshadowed by Futurism; it’s Italian contemporary, Vorticism has lain in wait for a moment to shine.
Now that moment has arrived, and where better for Vorticism to have the chance to stand on it's own two feet than the country that produced their biggest rivals, the Futurists; Italy. From today, until the 15th May 2011,
The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914 - 1918 will be on show at the
Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. The exhibition will be the first devoted to Vorticism to be presented in Italy, making this a landmark event for the movement.
Vorticism was an important, modern British art movement. Occurring at the beginning of the 20th-century; a time when the threat of war and the toll of modern industrial developments were in play, the Vorticists embraced modernity and celebrated the role of the artist as a calm and meditative spectator of modern life. From this vortex; the calm at the centre of the madness, the Vorticists produced abstracted figurative images of modern society.
Led by the ever-controversial character, Wyndham Lewis, the group included painters such as William Roberts, Helen Saunders and Edward Wadsworth, along with sculptors Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Jacob Epstein. The group also included photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn, whose Vortographs were first shown in London in 1917, and are considered to be the first abstract photographs. Together, the Vorticists developed a style, and mode of thought, that has left us with some of the best commentary on one of the most pivotal times in history.
The exhibition in Venice takes a view of the movement that highlights its Anglo-American connections and the exhibitions that were mounted in the early part of the 20th-century. Put together by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, in collaboration with the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and the Tate Britain, the exhibition looks set to shed some new light on the Vorticist movement, and hopefully find it a new generation of fans.
Posted on January 30th 2011 on 03:23pm
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Saturday 29th January 2011The Art Institute of Chicago Celebrates Historic Acquisition
Kazimir Malevich, Painterly Realism of a Football Player--Color Masses in the 4th Dimension (1915). Oil on canvas. ß27-5/8 x 17-5/16 in. (70.2 x 44.1 cm). Through prior gift of Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection, Art Institute of Chicago Acquisition Funds, 2011.1.
The Art Institute of Chicago has something to celebrate, as they announce the acquisition of one of the most significant pieces of art to join their incredible collection. Kazimir Malevich's iconic painting, entitled
Painterly Realism of a Football Player - Colour Masses in the 4th Dimension, of 1915 will join the collection in Chicago as the first acquisition of 2011, thanks to the Art Institute's Acquisition Fund.
By appearing in Chicago, the painting, which is of great significance and importance in the art historical canon, will sit amongst many other great works of art, including Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884; Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, 1942; Grant Wood's American Gothic, 1930 and Henri Matisse's Bathers by A River.
While the museum has a notoriously strong collection, they are still a few gaps that have yet to be filled. Bringing in Malevich's work helps them to fill one of those gaps, with the work being the first of Russian Suprematism to grace the galleries of the Art Institute. Interestingly, with this acquisition, the museum becomes only the second public institution in the whole of the United States to feature a Suprematist painting by Malevich in their collection.
Russian Suprematism was an art movement which formed in 1915, and was fully focused on the representational value of the fundamental geometric shapes. Malevich was the founding member of Suprematism, having already worked his way through the artistic modes of futurism and cubism. As a form of abstraction, Suprematism was radically reductive - portraying recognisable and everyday subjects in a non-objective manner. Malevich reached complete abstraction, and the purest form of painting with Black Square of 1913; the ultimate reduction of painting and the most basic element of artistic creation. In Suprematism, once the state of the Black Square was reached, the artist was free to step through to a new form of art; a return to the start of creation.
Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1913. Russian State Museum, St Petersburg
Painterly Realism of a Football Player takes the Suprematist values of geometric reduction, and the analysis of the relationship of shapes and form in the modern world, and represents them in a purely abstract manner. The work itself avoids all political, social and natural relationships with the world and tunes into the more primitive values of a world broken up into squares, circles, rectangles and triangles.
The work came to the museum through renowned art dealer Larry Gagosian, who acted on behalf of the Malevich's heirs who had put the work on offer. It is great that this work will go on show to an international audience as it takes its place in the Art Institute of Chicago, to sit as a deserved superstar of the art world, amongst its international contemporaries.
Posted on January 29th 2011 on 03:20pm
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Wednesday 26th January 2011Is Analog Photography Development Almost Dead?
Richard Nicholson, Roy Snell
Earlier this week, the
It's Nice That blog posted about a project by photographer Richard Nicholson; a project documenting what is left of professional photography and film darkrooms in and around London. The project is being exhibited under the title
Analog - Last One Out, and presents an increasingly sentimental view of the fast disappearing art of darkroom processing.
When Nicholson started his project there were 204 professional darkrooms, however four years on the number of professional darkrooms in London can be counted in single figures. A sad fact for anyone with an appreciation of the intimacy and subtly of darkroom developing.
Richard Nicholson, Debbie Sears
Nicholson has spent time documenting these darkrooms to create an archive of imagery that gains an increasing amount of importance as we move evermore towards an entirely digital age. The work however, does not ignore the fact that there are still strong pockets of resistance that hold true to the art of darkroom production.
The work from the
Analog series is currently being show at the
Riflemaker, and if you're interested in finding out more about the man himself, visit his
personal website. If you can't wait long enough to click a few buttons, his bio succinctly reads; "Richard was born in Liverpool, grew up in Bristol, and now lives in Bethnal Green, London. He divides his time between working for magazines, shooting personal objects, and doing nothing." Nice one.
Posted on January 26th 2011 on 09:44pm
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Monday 24th January 2011Gallereo Tip of the Week - Changing Your Website TemplateWhen you set up your Gallereo website, you are able to pick between a range of different templates that you can then customise with your own content and images.
What happens if you get bored with your template 6 months down the line, or you find you've made the wrong choice? Why not just change it?
You can change your template as often as you like with Gallereo, and it's really easy to do so. Plus, each time you change, all of your content and images are moved for you, so there's no hard work involved at all.
Here's how you do it. Go to Template Management on the Configuration menu.
There you will see the template that you are using, plus a grid of the other available templates, in all of the available colours.
Simply select the template that you would like to change to, in the colour that you want, and press select. This will change your template for you.
If you want to get a better look at the templates, just press Preview, or see what other people are doing by viewing the Gallereo
featured artists websites.
If you decide that you actually were better off in the beginning, you can always change back to what you had originally.
The choice is yours!
Posted on January 24th 2011 on 03:26pm
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Saturday 22nd January 2011British Sculpture Reins Supreme at the Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts in London is to present the first major exhibition, in 30 years, to take a good look at the state of British sculpture in the twentieth century. The show is to be an exploration of what it means for something to be a British sculpture, and how such creations sit within the broader context of British links with its Empire, continental Europe and the United States.
Ordered chronologically, but presented as an array of unconventional juxtapositions, the exhibition looks set to challenge established thought on the matter of British sculpture and to form new discussion and concepts.
Amongst the sculptors to go on show will be Jacob Epstein, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Richard Long, Damien Hirst and Leon Underwood, ensuring that there will be a little bit of something for anyone with a taste for the 3-dimensional art form.
With significant loans from both the British Museum and the V&A, visitors can also expect to be taken beyond the traditions of the British Isles, in terms of sculptural subject matter. Native American, Indian and African traditions will be highlighted amongst the material, as the exhibition looks at the way in which curious British artists took to drawing on influences from around the world.
As well as looking at the traditions and influences within the range of sculpture on show, the exhibition will also tackle the choices that artists faced between figurative and abstract creation. In the early part of the twentieth century, sculpture still held both commemorative and political duties, forcing sculptors to either comply with tradition, or to look to break the mould.
The exhibition opened today and will run until the 7th April 2011. Make sure you check out the
Royal Academy website for more information!
Posted on January 22nd 2011 on 02:51pm
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Saturday 22nd January 2011A Perspective on Architectural Photography: Extracts of Local Distance
Building: The Jewish Museum. Photograher: Klaus Frahm
I came across a photography project the other day whilst browsing on a favourite image sharing blog called
Ffffound!. The photographs, at first glance, seemed to be exploding architectural collages, formed from various modern buildings or architectural structures.
Some further investigation into the photographs did reveal that they are based on modern buildings and structures, and that they are composed as collages, however there was far more to the images than just any sort of explosion.
The project that these images belong too happened in Berlin in 2009, and is called Extracts of Local Distance: Common Perspective Images. The project brought together artists and designers Benjamin Maus, Frederic Gmeiner and Torsten Posselt, and photographer Klaus Frahm. Frahm's architectural photographs were manipulated in to vast numbers of photographic fragments, before being collaged back together under a third abstract point of view, beyond that of the original architect and the photographer.
Building: The Barcelona Pavilion
The architectural pictures, that form the basis for the project, feature buildings such as The Jewish Museum, The Barcelona Pavilion and the Hamburg University Library - all stunningly modern buildings. Those pictures were then analysed and categorised, by a complex computing algorithm, by their vanishing points and shapes.
With these segments allowed to retain their original positioning in relation to their original vanishing point, they were then used to form the layers of a new image, with a new perspective, and new shapes. The project could have easily produced endless numbers of unique images, however only a choice selection of particularly aesthetically pleasing outcomes made it into the final state of a fine-art print.
We have shared a few of our favourites, but make sure to visit the
Extracts of Local Distance website in order to watch a video all about the project and to view the full range of images.
Building: Hamburg University Library
Posted on January 22nd 2011 on 12:32am
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Thursday 20th January 2011Charity Auction for The Photographers' Gallery at Christie'sChristie's, the world famous auction house, is set to hold a charity sale this February in order to raise money for The Photographers' Gallery.
The Photographers' Gallery, as stated on their website, is the largest public gallery in London dedicated to photography, covering everything from the latest hot-shot talent to well established names on the photography scene. An impressive historical archive also ensures that the gallery deserves the support to expand and grow.
The charity auction to be held at Christie's will raise funds for the construction of a new building in the West End of London, allowing The Photographers' Gallery to respond to the consistent growth of popularity in the field of photography. The new premises, which will be a conversion of a former Edwardian industrial warehouse into a sparkling centre devoted to all things photography, is set to open in Autumn 2011.
The new space will feature public galleries, a floor dedicated to education, a print sales room, a bookshop and a ground floor café. There will also be an interactive element where visitors can upload their own images in the café to be displayed on the Wall for All.
The auction itself will be held at Christie's South Kensington sale room on the 17th February and the catalogue is available to view on the
Christie's website.
Posted on January 20th 2011 on 05:48pm
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Tuesday 18th January 2011A Personal View of Sigmar Polke at the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin
Sigmar Polke: Supermarkets aus dem Zyklus „Wir Kleinbürger!“, 1976
Gouache, Acryl, Trockenstifte, Sprayfarben, Collage auf Papier
Foto: Olaf Pascheit © VG Bild-Kunst
A great exhibition, and tribute to Sigmar Polke (1941 - 2010), is now on show at the
Akademie der Künste in Berlin, curated by the President of the Akademie der Künste, Klaus Staeck. The exhibition is entitled,
Sigmar Polke - Eine Hommage, Bilanz einer Künstlerfreundschaft Polke/Staeck (
Sigmar Polke - a tribute, a balance of artistic friendship Polke / Staeck) and will run until the 13th March 2011.
The exhibition explores Staeck's forty-year long, working relationship and friendship with Polke, and further exposes why Polke is one of Germany's most important artists.
Polke attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Arts Academy) at the age of twenty, where he was deeply influenced by one of his teachers; legendary artist, Joseph Beuys. As well as having a strong grounding for artistic creation at school, Polke was also beginning his life as an artist at a time when Germany was going through huge cultural, social and economic change. Düsseldorf in particular, in the 1960's, was a vibrant commercial city with a strong artistic community.
In 1963, along with Gerhard Richter and Konrad Fischer (Konrad Leug as he was also known), Polke founded the painting movement, Capital Realism. The movement championed the pictorial short hand found in advertising, with subject matter often commenting on the consumer driven capitalist mode adopted by western civilisation.
The exhibition at the Akademie der Künste has around 90 large scale works on show, covering the four-deacades that Polke and Staeck were friends. Alongside the works there are also testimonials and photographs documenting Polke's artistic life, with Staeck opening up his personal archives to add a rare touch to the exhibition.
Posted on January 18th 2011 on 10:23pm
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Thursday 13th January 2011Social Media for Artists and PhotographersWhen you sign up for an artist or photographer website with Gallereo, you automatically have the chance to link your website to your Facebook, Twitter of LinkedIn account, if you already have one. If not, you should definitely think about getting onboard.
Social media has become an integral part of the online space, and no matter what your preconceived conceptions about Facebook, or Twitter maybe, we actually recommend that you take another look, find out how they can be valuable resources for you, and learn how to make the most of social media.
Why Bother?
First of all, lets start by saying that the purpose of social media is not to let everyone know that you've just had your tenth cup of tea of the day. It's also miss-guided to pigeon-hole social media as a platform where all you get to hear about is how many cups of tea people have had each day.
The purpose of being part of social media is develop a network or people who are interested in what you do, or do things that you are interested in. Not only can you learn a great deal and find out about the latest news and updates, but you can make connections and find out about great opportunities that you may not have found out about elsewhere.
In saying that, let's take a look at our top 3 social media sites, and pass on our advice of how you use them, in a constructive way, to develop your network and communicate with other, like-minded people.
Facebook
Facebook contains both the pros and cons of being part of social media. The usual approach is to create an account for yourself and then create a 'page' about your website and your work. With having a personal account, you will probably become friends with people that you know, knew or know of, and in doing so you might have to put up with some comments about cups of tea. However, you can also just remove people from your account if they continue to re-offend on the subject..
What you should do is have a look around at other pages on Facebook and see what tickles your fancy. There are endless numbers of pages on all facets of photography, painting, drawing and sculpture. Museums have their own pages, galleries have their own pages, art publications have their own pages. If you're interested, why not join them to get updates on your favourite subjects?
Your next goal is to get people to find your page, and 'Like' it so that they get all of your news and updates. Often easier said than done, but make sure to invite all of your friends to your page, let your mailing list know you now have a Facebook page and generally spread the word.
On your page you will be able to display sample artworks from your site, link to new additions, update people on your next exhibition or generally let people know what's going on in your world. Hopefully this will encourage them to take a look at your website and get more involved with your work.
Twitter
Twitter is a social media site that seems to cause a lot of confusion and produce a lot of negativity from the non-Twitter community. Again, we'll say that your experience of Twitter will fully depend on how intelligently you use it, and what you expect to get from it.
Basically, on Twitter, you can post news, pictures, links and updates, as long as you don't use more than 140 characters in your post. You can also reply to other peoples posts by using the @ sign. Example - "
@gallereo thanks for your post on using Twitter." You can also discuss common topics and have your say by using the # tag. Example - "I'm really loving the work of #pietmondrian right now."
Now that we've thrown the basics at you, how do you use Twitter effectively? You would create a profile for yourself as an artist or photographer and put a link in there to your website. You would then look to 'follow' people or ogansations that you are interested in. You will then get Tweets in your news feed from these people or organisations.
The key to success for you, is to acquire followers. This again, isn't always easy, but do-able. Often, when you follow someone, they will follow you. Don't be upset if they don't though; just because you like them, doesn't mean that it's reciprocal. That's the way of the world. You can also encourage people to follow you by creating useful, meaningful Tweets of your own, or engaging in conversations with other people or topics using the @ and # tags.
When people come to check out your Twitter profile when they follow you, they'll hopefully also end up visiting your website. That's where the win in all of this is.
Just like Facebook, if you follow someone who only Tweets about what they had for breakfast, just unfollow them. If they're really boring, block them so they may never darken your door again. Harsh, but sometimes necessary.
LinkedIn
Social media for the professional. Here you should not have any fears about tea updates, unless you link up with PG Tips or Liptons. The purpose of
LinkedIn is for professionals to network and share opportunities with other professionals.
Create a profile and get as much information as you can up there about yourself, with a link back to your website. Then start to introduce yourself to people that you know. The network is protected from extremely self-interested people (often referred to as Spammers) by limiting networking to people who you know, or know you, off-line. You start there, and then you are able to ask for introductions within their network if you have reason to request such an introduction.
Another way of building a network on LinkedIn is to join various groups and discussion boards that you are interested in. Become a committed member and contribute effectively and you'll soon find your network growing. More importantly, you'll find that there is a lot to learn, and a lot to discover through social media.
Want to get started making friends? Why not track down Gallereo first. We're on
Facebook,
Twitter and
LinkedIn and will welcome you with open arms to our network. Drop us a message to let us know a little more about you.
Posted on January 13th 2011 on 05:32pm
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Wednesday 12th January 2011Shepard Fairey Battle Reaches an End
Shepard Fairey "Obama Hope" 2008 Courtesy of ARTINFO
As reported by
ARTINFO, Artist Shepard Fairey has been involved in a long running legal battle with the Associated Press over the famous poster,
Obama Hope, that he created using one of the agency's photographs of Barack Obama. However, that may now be over.
Fairey turned the photograph of Obama into a pop-art-style poster, entitled Obama Hope, back in 2008, and filed a federal suit in 2009 in order to gain a declaratory judgement finding that his appropriation of the image was protected under the United States "fair use" statute. This statute allows for the limited use of copywritten material for creative purposes.
The case now seems to be at an end, with neither side backing down. Instead discussions are moving from the courtroom into the boardroom, with Fairey now looking set to collaborate with the Associated Press in sharing the right to benefit from the production and sale of the Hope posters, and use of that image.
Posted on January 12th 2011 on 06:30pm
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