Little Black Book of Art

If you’re heading down Cornwall way this summer, drop into the wonderful Tate St Ives…

Drawing on British and international works in the Tate collection, this display takes post-war art in St Ives as a starting point through which to explore common characteristics in European and American modern art from the 1930′s to the late 1970′s.  It is the Tate’s most extensive collection display for over ten years.

The three rooms in the display are titled Object, Gesture and Grid respectively. Object reveals how cubism and surrealism influenced form in the mid to late twentieth century, from Pablo Picasso to Barbara Hepworth.

The materiality of paint and its connection to subconscious expression is considered through gesture. Recalling significant European modernist movements through the works of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Karel Appel, Gesture considers the influence on St Ives artists such as Patrick Heron and Peter Lanyon.

Works by Joseph Albers, Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd illustrate how the grid has dawn the painting, sculpture and architecture together, making the viewer both psychologically and physically part of the artistic experience.

Visit http://www.tate.org.uk/stives for more information.

Text credit: Tate

On show at the Victoria & Albert Museum are outstanding documentary photographs from 1962 to 1982, originally published in the pioneering magazine New Society. The display will feature the work of twenty-three photographers who captured the diversity of life in Britain and pivotal social issues in the late twentieth century.

The magazine engaged with young British photojournalists working in the tradition of ‘concerned’ photography and recognised early the talent of figures such as Brian Griffin, Martin Parr, and Chris Steele-Perkins, who have gone on to achieve wide acclaim.

Click HERE for more details.

Exhibition runs from 14 May – 26 September 2010 in the Photography Gallery 38A, Free Admission.

Opening times 10.00-17.00 daily, Friday open late till 22.00

Blurring the borders between art, design and fashion photography, Daniel Josefsohn‘s works capture the spirit of a generation that playfully mixes media and styles creating a very individual language for its environment and way of life. But the unique nature of his work lies in the cracks in the surface. Although his pictures are aesthetically pleasing and well-composed, their glossy surfaces conceal an altogether darker, deeper and unspoken level. A good example is his picture of a middle-class residence in the German countryside. The architecture, the little garden and the curtains in the window are all innocuous enough. However this is the scene of the “Cannibal of Rothenburg” case, a crime that shocked the world. It is precisely this conflict between an aesthetically pleasing surface and the history or events that are associated with it that gives the pictures their disconcerting and decidedly political edge.

Whether the subject is right-wing extremism in Germany or the Middle East conflict, Josefsohn invariably finds unusual motifs and unsettling scenes. His series “Jewing Gun” portrays young Israeli soldiers. The photographs are characterised by the contrasts between military uniforms and small accessories like sunglasses, which make the whole series resemble a fashion spread for a magazine. In fact, what the accessories actually do is show the hue of personality the soldiers have tried to bring to their regulation clothing. Josefsohn does not capture his subjects like an impartial bystander, but as a highly conscious observer who eschews the repetitive stereotypes we so often see in the media.

Daniel Josefsohn was born in 1961 and currently lives in Berlin. Since 1995 he has been working as a freelance photographer for numerous magazines. He first came to public attention with a series of black-and-white portraits of youngsters, which he took for an MTV campaign. Alongside his photographs and photo essays, Josefsohn also makes films and actual products. The first institutional solo exhibition at Kunstverein Hamburg presents a wide range of his works.

Text: E-Flux

Daniel Josefsohn
‘Everything’s gonna be alright mother’
1 May – 30 May 2010

Kuntsverein Hamburg
Der Kunstverein, since 1817.
Klosterwall 23
20095 Hamburg
Germany

For more information visit: www.kunstverein.de

US artist David LaChapelle’s (b.1963) latest collection of images is a serious take on global politics, western consumerism and its effects on Africa. The pictures form part of a new exhibition entitled ‘The Rape of Africa’ and are currently on show at Robilant + Voena on Dover Street in Mayfair, London.

Over the past few years David LaChapelle has focused solely on his interest in fine art, having consolidated his illustrious career in fashion photography, video and editorial. His work is known for its surreal, baroque qualities, and it is this same language that he’s developed to tell new stories in his latest work.

‘The Rape of Africa’ is an allegorical melange that draws on Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli’s iconic ‘Venus and Mars’ for inspiration, and continues his longtime collaboration with the model Naomi Campbell. Here one can see that LaChapelle subverts an apparently glitzy, bold and glamorous image to give us a very disturbing reality.

His pieces are laden with an obvious critique of how our Western society is negatively impacting the African continent through references to conquest and plunder, child soldiers, unethical gold and diamond mining, and the commodification of African beauty.

Press Release

‘The Rape of Africa’ will be exhibited alongside other important works inspired by models from art history through to contemporary celebrity. Preparatory drawings for the main work will be on display, demonstrating the complexity of the artist’s process. Recent works such as ‘The Birth of Venus’, also inspired by Botticelli, and ‘Fleurs du Mal’, referencing Baudelaire’s ‘Flowers of Evil’, were shot on location in Hana, Hawaii, the artist’s home.

The inspiration which the artist has found in the epic glory of the natural landscape, is very clear and represents a departure from his previously more ‘styled’ work. It is the striking landscapes that heighten the poetry of each image, creating a precious world of surprising emotional honesty, yet at a second glance we notice that cheeky little reminders of contemporary consumer society are scattered within.

This inherent dialectic reinforces our understanding of LaChapelle’s preoccupation with using beauty and glamour to explore difficult or controversial subject matter, to dig deeper below the surface.

David LaChapelle’s work is exhibited in museums worldwide, currently at the MOCA, Taipei, and recently LACMA, Los Angeles, the Monnaie de Paris, Brooklyn Museum, New York, and forthcoming at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

The ‘Rape of Africa’ runs at Robilant + Voena from 27 April – 25 May 2010

Robilant + Voena
1st floor, 38 Dover Street
London
W1S 4NL

Tel: +44 207 409 1540

‘It is through his brilliant use of beauty and fantasy that David LaChapelle somehow and irresistibly arrives at the truth. The ugly truth’. Colin Wiggins, National Gallery, London

‘The latest work from David LaChapelle…is a serious artistic take on global politics’, Skye Sherwin, Harper’s Bazaar

‘Drawing on a broad base that ranges from art history to street culture, LaChapelle’s new work is turning many a stiff-necked critic’s head, focusing the lens of celebrity and fashion on consumerism and cultural hierarchies.’ Anna Carnick, Dazed&Confused

Click HERE for The Independent newspaper art review.

Black Rat Press is a contemporary art gallery in the heart of Shoreditch that specialises in urban, street and graffiti artwork by the likes of Blek le Rat, d* face and Peter Kennard.

As the name suggests, the sale of prints is the mainstay of Black Rat Press, but the gallery also hosts regular exhibitions of original work. There are currently a couple of exciting new shows coming up that are well worth a visit.

Firstly there is an exhibition entitled ‘Now ‘s the Time’, which features important works by arguably the most influential artists ever to have worked in the streets,  including Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Banksy, Barry McGee, Faile and Os Gemeos.

A collection of urban inspired artwork, woodcuts, sculptures, stickers, freehand paintings, posters, ceramic tiles and photographs all go some way to prove street art often involves more than a can of spray paint and a brick wall. The exhibition opens on 23 April 2010 and a preview evening will be on Thursday 22 April 2010.

For more information visit: www.blackratpress.co.uk

Black Rat Press also recently returned from an amazing trip to Zambia with Matt Small and Swoon. Matt will be working on a series on new paintings based on his time in Zambia and the gallery will be hosting a fundraising exhibition of the work later in the year. The money raised will be used to help with the work at the Robert Shitima School in Kabwe where Matt and Swoon ran a week of art workshops. Click HERE to view photos of the trip.

More information to follow…

A new exhibition at London’s British Museum unites arguably the world’s two greatest collections of Renaissance drawings and underlines their growing importance to artists throughout the 15th century.

‘Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings’ displays around 100 works by Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Mantegna, Michelangelo and Titian in a show already being hailed by critics as a five-star event.

It combines works from the museum’s own collection and from that of the Uffizi in Florence. The show runs from April 22 to July 25 2010 and then transfers to the Uffizi.

The exhibition explains how drawings were used to prepare for major paintings and frescoes and, later in the 15th century, how they became works of art in their own right, particularly with the arrival of print-making from northern Europe.

In addition to often detailed and exquisite pictures of figures, limbs and drapery are fast, rough sketches by the likes of Leonardo who used pen and ink drawings as a way of brainstorming and arriving at ideas for major works.

“One can sense the excitement as their quills raced over the paper to keep pace with the flow of ideas,” said British Museum director Neil MacGregor in introductory remarks for the show.

The show also underlines how the development of paper, a cheaper alternative to vellum, was key to drawing’s expansion.

For more information, please visit www.britishmuseum.org or call the Ticket Desk for exhibition and events ticket booking on +44 (0)20 7323 8181.

(Text: ArtDaily)

On 17 April 2010, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum will debut Grace Kelly Style Icon, a look at the fashion sense of the celebrated actress and tragic princess whose name is shorthand for flawless sophistication.

Stretching from her movie star debut in the 1950s through her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco and into her glamorous, secluded life in the 1970s, the exhibition also tells the story of a dramatic shift in international fashion.

There is also a wide range of events at the V&A to complement the exhibition, including films screenings, a film and fashion study day, a short course on 1950s haute couture and practical workshops. Visit the website to find out more www.vam.ac.uk.

Exhibition runs from 17 April – 26 September 2010

Opening hours: 10.00 to 17.45 daily, Fridays till 22.00

V&A South Kensington
Cromwell Road
London SW7 2RL
+44 (0)20 7942 2000

For a more comprehensive show review, click HERE.

Text: ArtInfo

Yves Saint Laurent viewed fashion as an art, and, as the first designer to ever have a museum show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1983, elevated it to that rarefied plateau within the public consciousness.

This spring, the Petit Palais in Paris celebrates the revolutionary designer with an exhibition that is simply called Yves Saint Laurent Retrospective. The show traces particular moments in his career and hones in on themes within it: masculinity and femininity (and the adventurous unisex spirit he sought to dress), imaginary travel, gowns and tuxedos, the designer’s color palette, and, of course, the arts.

Saint Laurent’s passion for art achieved worldwide fame when his collection – which included works by Henri Matisse, James Ensor, Constantin Brancusi, and Pablo Picasso – was auctioned at Christie’s in February 2009 for $264 million, making it the most expensive private holdings ever to be sold. Naturally, some of his favorite artists directly impacted his designs.

He famously re-imagined van Gogh’s sunflowers on a jacket by building up embroidery, sequins, and silk ribbons in a way that emulates brushstrokes on a canvas. Matisse‘s bold collages manifested themselves in Saint Laurent’s satin appliqués, cut and layered atop other textiles. The styles of the designer’s friend Jean Cocteau and the surrealist couturier Elsa Schiaparelli were merged on a satin jacket of shocking pink – Schiaparelli’s favorite color – with the poet’s text embroidered across.

The clothes illustrate how Saint Laurent saw kinship in ideas, and they also show how the designer had a talent for conveying the sensibility of other people through his craft.

For more information click HERE.

The exhibition runs in Paris from 11 March – 29 August 2010 at Le Petit Palais Avenue Winston Churchill , 75008 Paris, Open: 10.00 – 17.40, Closed: Monday and some bank holidays.