Fine Art of One-upmanship: $10m for Gallery

JUST a day after the Art Gallery of NSW announced a $4 million gift from one of Sydney's richest families to create a contemporary art gallery, the rival Museum of Contemporary Art has trumped it, unveiling a $10 million donation from two of the city's wealthiest businessmen.

David Coe, the financier and museum chairman, and Simon Mordant, its fund-raising foundation chairman, confirmed to the Herald yesterday that they had each given $5 million to help fund a new educational wing and cafe.

Their gift is believed to be the largest single donation by private philanthropists to any Australian arts organisation.

It comes just weeks after Mr Coe, a keen skier, almost died in an avalanche in New Zealand.

The pair said they'd been working on a $50 million refurbishment and extension plan for 18 months with the MCA's director, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, and architect Sam Marshall.

In 2001, two schemes to redevelop the museum were withdrawn after criticism from the heritage lobby and oppponents including the former prime minister Paul Keating.

One $100 million scheme involved the demolition of the 1940s sandstone building. The $80 million option involved a glass structure - ridiculed as a gigantic Ikea coffee table - sitting over the former Maritime Services Board headquarters.

This time, Ms Macgregor says, she has held informal talks with heritage groups, assuring them that the new concept will leave the facade and integrity of the existing building intact.

Yet the proposed new wing, at the Harbour Bridge end of the site on an existing car park, "will be unmistakably modern", Mr Coe said. Critics claim one of the key failings of the existing building is that it does not flag that it is a contemporary arts centre.

"This is one of the most photographed parts of the Australian landscape," Mr Coe said. "But there's no doubt the external fabric of this building does not match what we do internally."

Mr Coe and the English-born Mr Mordant - whose wife, Catriona, is a trustee on the Art Gallery of NSW Foundation - said $25 million would be raised from the business community, leaving federal and state governments and the City of Sydney to fund the remaining $25 million.

"We've already got support from other philanthropists that we are not yet ready to announce," said Mr Mordant, a corporate adviser.

The proposed annexe will house a lecture theatre, educational facilities and a cafe.

About $18 million of the budget has been earmarked for improving the existing building - including opening up a new Circular Quay vista from the George Street entrance.

On Tuesday, the family of the late Italian-born construction magnate Franco Belgiorno-Nettis announced details of a $4 million donation to the Art Gallery of NSW. The money will be used to convert storage space into a contemporary art gallery.

Source
Steve Meacham
August 30, 2007

Monet and Dali exhibition

Art fans flock to VAG's Monet, Dali exhibition
Attendance is on track to hit 200,000 by the time the exhibition ends Sept. 16
Kevin Griffin, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, August 25, 2007
The Vancouver Art Gallery's Monet to Dali exhibition is a blockbuster like the gallery has never seen before.

So far, the VAG is on track to more than double its previous record summer attendance. As well, the gallery has already exceeded the previous record for yearly revenue.

Kathleen Bartels, VAG director, said by e-mail that Monet to Dali "has surpassed our expectations and broken all previous attendance records for a summer exhibition. It has been our privilege to make this amazing selection of works spanning a century of modernism available to our visitors." Read more
Source: The Vancover Sun


Source

A Tree - Oil in canvas

Bad Katrina

Love Joy

Geometric lines

Louvre, France

The Lacemaker
The book in the foreground, probably the Bible, sets the model's activity in the traditional context of morality infused with religion.

The woman (who is not, as has been unfoundedly claimed, Vermeer's wife) is not wearing work clothes. The marvelously colored cushion on the left is a sewing cushion, used to store sewing materials.

The concentration of the model and the play of colors against the light gray background make this one of Vermeer's masterpieces.
Source:
LaceMaker

still life with 4 peaches

Dallas at night

Dallas at night

"Decorator" coffee service

c. 1960

Maker: Oneida
American, founded 1877

Source:

• http://shopdma.org/signatureproducts.htm

Lunch Box

Source:

• Link

Van Gogh painting vanished and appeared?

Head of a Man was brought to Australia in 1939 by the late newspaper publisher Keit Murdoch, father of Rupert, as part of a travelling exhibition. It became stranded on the outbreak of war, and was bought by the National Gallery of Victoria in 1949 for A$4000. It was subsequently valued, as a Van Gogh, at A$25 million. Read more...
Source:
Link

Head of a Man, 1885
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

* Oil on Canvas, 38 X 30 cm
* Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
(Vincent van Gogh Stichting)

Unfinished symphony

The Final, Glorious, Days of Van Gogh

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Madrid art

Vincent Van Gogh spent the last two months of his life
in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small village north of Paris, surrounded by hills, forests and wheat fields. Looked after by an art-loving doctor, Paul Gachet, and inspired by the summer glory of the landscape, Van Gogh entered a final, frenetic period of productivity, finishing around a painting a day. Though they would break no new ground stylistically, Van Gogh's late works capture a remarkable range of moods, from spring-like restlessness to autumnal despair.

Madrid's Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza has mounted the first major show devoted to Van Gogh's final period. "Van ...


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Art de Madrid

Vincent Van Gogh a passé les deux derniers mois de sa vie
dans l'Auvers-sur-Oise, un petit nord de village de Paris, entouré par des collines, des forêts et des champs de blé. Occupé par un docteur art-affectueux, Paul Gachet, et inspiré par la gloire d'été du paysage, Van Gogh a écrit une période finale et frénétique de la productivité, finissant autour d'une peinture par jour. Bien qu'ils ne cassent aucune nouvelle terre stylistiquement, les travaux en retard de Van Gogh's capturent une gamme remarquable des modes, de ressort-comme l'agitation au désespoir automnal.

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza de Madrid a monté la première exposition principale consacrée à la période finale de Van Gogh's. « Fourgon…


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Oil on canvas

Pablo Picasso

Picasso and Tapestry

In the 1930’s and then again after WWII, France witnessed a renewed interest in

tapestry and many artists explored this new medium, generally made of wool, in

high or low-warp.

Marie Cuttoli was the first to solicit Picasso and had tapestries made from the

artist’s works she bought, such as the collage “Minotaure” kept in the MNAM

(National Museum of Modern Art) in Paris (woven version at the Picasso Museum

in Antibes, which owns several tapestries after Picasso).

After the war, Pierre Baudouin also developed a passion for this technique and

made possible the production, by the Manufacture des Gobelins, of “Women at

their Toilet”, a project started before the war which had remained unachieved.

Some workshops, such as those of Cauquil-Prince and Dürbach, also made

tapestries from Picasso’s major works such as Guernica, The Demoiselles

d’Avignon, the Minotauromachy.

Picasso’s collaboration took two forms:

1/ He made an “original” cartoon to have it woven

2/ He grants a workshop the right to weave a tapestry form a pre-existing work

In both cases, the edition was limited to eight copies.

The most frequent case is that of the transposed pre-existing work. Picasso in the

end only made but a few specific cartoons, among which “Confidences” (1934,

MNAM) and “Woman at their Toilet” (1938, Picasso Museum, Paris)

The transcription and long production process, often lasting several years, only

gave birth in general to 3 or 4 copies of each tapestry for the most complex

designs.

A strip of cloth or a “bolduc” is sewn at the back of the tapestry indicating the name

and the autograph signature of Picasso, the title and the dimensions of the work as

well as the name of the tapestry workshop and the number of the edition. Only

these duly certified tapestries are considered original and subject to the resale

right.

These tapestries are not to be mistaken for unsigned industrially-manufactured

ornamental carpets which are merchandising products.

Sources:

• http://www.picasso.fr/anglais/
• http://www.philamuseum.org/

Vincent

Van Gogh Quotes
"I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate."

"A good picture is equivalent to a good deed."

"An artist needn't be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men."

"The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism."

"There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even-the French air clears up the brain and does good-a world of good."

"If ... boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?"
"To do good work one must eat well, be well housed, have one's fling from time to time, smoke one's pipe, and drink one's coffee in peace."

"There is no blue without yellow and without orange."

"It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to.... The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures."

"I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true."

"We spend our whole lives in unconscious exercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words."
Source:

Link to Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

Pierre Auguste Renoir

Bouquet Of Roses 1879

The Sleeper 1897

After The Bath 1888

Sources:

• Link
• Link
  

Baroque Art

The Church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, is a very good example of Baroque architechture with its domed roof and curved countours, and is also a fine example of Baroque painting with the shown altar, which portrays a very dramatized painting of Saint Andrew being crucified.

Source:
Wikipedia

HIdden Von Gogh Pinting

For years, art scholars pondered a mystery: Did Vincent van Gogh create a painting that matches a sketch in Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum?

Now a conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts has discovered the lost painting, but museumgoers will never be able to see it: The painting lies underneath another van Gogh long on display at the MFA, the museum announced yesterday. -Read more-

Source:

• http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/08/04/hidden_van_gogh_found_at_mfa/

Italy: Looted Art Values...

ROME -
Efforts to tackle art trafficking "make looting more attractive" as a tighter black market has raised the value of the booty, Italy's culture minister said Thursday, a day after reaching a historic agreement with the J. Paul Getty Museum to recover some lost treasures.

-Read more-

Source:

• http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/02/ap3982197.html