Watch a video preview of Gerhard Richter: Painting After All, on view at The Met Breuer from March 4 through July 5, 2020. The exhibition, which considers Richter’s six-decade-long preoccupation with the dual means of representation and abstraction to explore the material, conceptual and historical implications of painting, spans the entirety of Richter’s prolific and innovative career, and presents over one hundred works that focus on his specific commitment to the medium, as well as his related interests in photography, digital reproduction, and sculpture.
Tag Archives: Museum Exhibits
New Exhibitions: “El Greco – Ambition And Defiance” (Art Institute Of Chicago)
March 7 – June 21, 2020
This major exhibition charts the career of the artist known simply as El Greco. Over 57 works from across the world trace not only the development of his distinctive style but also the astounding ambition that drove him to relentlessly pursue success.
Born in Crete as Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541–1614), El Greco trained in the traditional manner of Byzantine icon painting. He moved to Venice in 1567 to learn a new artistic approach, absorbing developments in Venetian Renaissance painting through the lens of artists such as Titian and Tintoretto. The works El Greco painted during his time in Venice, however, reveal both his embrace of and struggles to fully adapt to this manner of painting.
Following this transformative period, El Greco went to Rome, probably in an attempt to attract patronage within the papal circle. There his acceptance into the elevated circle of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese brought a close association with the painter Giulio Clovio and the erudite historian and collector Fulvio Orsini. El Greco’s portraits, allegories, and religious paintings between 1570 and 1577 reflect these relationships as well as his complicated engagement with Michelangelo and other artistic luminaries of the 16th century.
Exhibitions: 88-Year Old Gerhard Richter “Painting After All” – Landscape As A Site Of Memory (The Met)
Over the course of his acclaimed 60-year career, Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) has employed both representation and abstraction as a means of reckoning with the legacy, collective memory, and national sensibility of post–Second World War Germany, in both broad and very personal terms.
This handsomely designed book features approximately 100 of his key canvases, from photo paintings created in the early 1960s to portraits and later large-scale abstract series, as well as select works in glass.
New essays by eminent scholars address a variety of themes: Sheena Wagstaff evaluates the conceptual import of the artist’s technique; Benjamin H. D. Buchloh discusses the poignant Birkenau paintings (2014); Peter Geimer explores the artist’s enduring interest in photographic imagery; Briony Fer looks at Richter’s family pictures against traditional painting genres and conventions; Brinda Kumar investigates the artist’s engagement with landscape as a site of memory; André Rottmann considers the impact of randomization and chance on Richter’s abstract works; and Hal Foster examines the glass and mirror works. As this book demonstrates, Richter’s rich and varied oeuvre is a testament to the continued relevance of painting in contemporary art.
Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden on 9th February 1932, the first child of Horst and Hildegard Richter. A daughter, Gisela, followed four years later. They were in many respects an average middle-class family: Horst worked as a teacher at a secondary school in Dresden and Hildegard was a bookseller who liked to play the piano.1 In an interview with Robert Storr, Richter described his early family life as “simple, orderly, structured – mother playing the piano and father earning money.”2
In 1935, Horst accepted a teaching position at a school in Reichenau, a town which today is known as Bogatynia in Poland, at the time located in the German province Saxony. Settling in Reichenau was a drastic change for the family, which was accustomed to the vivid cultural life of the larger Dresden.3 Yet, it was also a move which would keep the family largely safe from the coming war. In the late 1930s Horst was conscripted into the German army, captured by Allied forces and detained as a prisoner of war until Germany’s defeat. In 1946, he was released and returned to his family, who had again relocated, this time to Waltersdorf, a village on the Czech border.
New Museum Exhibitions: “Van Eyck – An Optical Revolution” At MSK Ghent
Worldwide, only approximately twenty works by Van Eyck have been preserved. Quite exceptionally, over half of these will travel to Ghent in 2020 for the exhibition ‘Van Eyck. An optical revolution’ at the Museum of Fine Arts (MSK). In what promises to be an unmissable, tour de force of an exhibition, the world of Van Eyck and his revolutionary gaze will be brought to life like never before.
The pinnacle of Late Medieval art
Van Eyck distinguished himself from his peers and triggered an optical revolution. With his matchless technique, scientific knowledge and unrivalled observational skills, he elevated oil painting to unprecedented heights and determined the future course of Western art. Never before had a painter made reality so tangible: all that seems to be missing from his portraits is his subjects’ breath, while his landscapes reveal the world in all its facets. Van Eyck trained his eye on the tiniest details before casting it wide again to create unforgettable panoramas.
His masterpiece, ‘The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb’ (1432, St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent), bears witness to all three of these qualities. The restoration of the outer wings of the altarpiece will play a central role in the exhibition. Undertaken by the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK), the project commenced at the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent in 2012. Visitors will have the opportunity to get close to the work and admire the spectacular results.
In dialogue with Van Eyck’s contemporaries
In order to contextualise Van Eyck’s optical revolution, his paintings will be shown alongside works by his most talented contemporaries from Germany, France, Italy and Spain. These artists also moved in exalted circles and received prestigious commissions. The exhibition focuses on the artistic similarities and differences between their works, thus delving deeper into the historical context in which they were created.
‘Van Eyck. An optical revolution’ unravels the myths about the artist and considers his technique, his oeuvre and his influence from a fresh perspective. This exhibition will awaken a sense of wonder among visitors, comparable to that which people would have felt when they saw his works for the first time: a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Top New Exhibitions: “Charles Arnoldi | Four Decades” (Fisher Museum)
USC Fisher Museum of Art proudly presents Charles Arnoldi | Four Decades, a survey of the versatile and prolific Venice Beach artist, which traces the evolution 
of the artist’s expansive and materials-focused practice from the 1970s to the present.
USC Fisher Museum of Art proudly announces Charles Arnoldi | Four Decades from the Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation, a survey of Venice Beach artist Charles (Chuck) Arnoldi. The exhibition, organized by the USC Fisher Museum of Art with the generous support of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation and curated by Bruce Guenther, author of Charles Arnoldi: Paper (2017), opens January 21, 2020 and runs through April 4, 2020.
Charles Arnoldi was a young man from Dayton, Ohio who had seen little of the world when he arrived in Southern California in the mid 1960s. Following stints at a local community college and Chouinard Art Institute, Arnoldi won LACMA’s New or Young Talent Award in 1969 and thus began his ever-evolving career which continues to this day in his sprawling Venice studio.
For close to 50 years, Arnoldi’s work has reflected a passion for the material world, a commitment to experimentation, and a tireless focus on studio production. Charles Arnoldi | Four Decades is drawn from the holdings of the collector Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation.
Arts Podcasts: Moving 100+ Monet Paintings To Denver Art Museum (NPR)
Visitors to the Denver Art Museum can currently see 120 different paintings by Claude Monet from all over the world. But how did they get there — like, literally get there?
To find out, I talked with Sarah Cucinella-McDaniel, chief registrar at the Denver Art Museum. She’s sort of like a travel agent for art — and for this exhibition she booked the itineraries for artworks from more than 70 lenders around the world: museums, as well as private collectors. (One of her recent days started unexpectedly, around 1:45 a.m., when one of her nine Monet shipments for the day arrived at the museum hours ahead of schedule.)
Arts & Culture: “Must-See Museum Exhibitions In January 2020” (Sotheby’s)
Top Museum Exhibits: “Paris In The Belle Époque”, Norton Simon Museum Through March 2, 2020
From the Norton Simon Museum website:
By Day & by Night: Paris in the Belle Époque surveys the rich range of artistic responses to life in the French capital through a selection of paintings, drawings, prints and photographs from the Museum’s collections. Together these works of art demonstrate that visual artists participated in the inventive spirit of the age by interpreting the everyday as something extraordinary.
The belle époque, a French expression meaning “beautiful era,” refers to the interwar years between 1871 and 1914, when Paris was at the forefront of urban development and cultural innovation. During this time Parisians witnessed the construction of the Eiffel Tower, the ascendancy of the Montmartre district as an epicenter for art and entertainment and the brightening of their metropolis under the glow of electric light. From the nostalgic perspective of the twentieth century, this four-decade period of progress and prosperity was a golden age of spectacle and joie de vivre.
To read more: https://www.nortonsimon.org/exhibitions/2010-2019/by-day-and-by-night-paris-in-the-belle-epoque/
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