MAKE ART / STOP AIDS

MAKE ART/STOP AIDS at UCLA's Fowler Museum opened this week. The exhibition highlights awareness of the epidemic of HIV and AIDS and examines the questions and history surrounding it. Works are included by Robert Gober, William Kentridge, Sue Coe, David Wojnarowicz, among other artists from Brazil, India, South Africa and the United States.

Make Art/Stop AIDS presents more than sixty contemporary works including paintings, sculptures, photographs, performance videos, posters, animated shorts, digital media, and installations that engage these questions: What is AIDS? Who lives, who dies? Why are condoms controversial? Are you afraid to touch? When was the last time you cried? Why a red ribbon? Are you ready to act?

Make Art/Stop AIDS
February 23, 2008 to June 15, 2008

La Maja Desnuda

As I searched the internet for some interesting art pieces I could post, I came across this painting and realized my father used to have it hanging in the hallway of our old apartment. I HAD to post it up here for all of you to enjoy so I really hope you do. Here is the painting and a critique from an anonymus person.

The Nude Maja (La Maja Desnuda), by francisco de Goya celebrates the sexiest skin, the most resilient flesh, the most exquisite suggestion of a line of hair running from the navel down. But the incoherent articulation - the inexplicable incompetence of the drawing of the arms, the impossible position of the breasts, the unconvincing conjunction of the head with the neck - is a virtual denial of the Renaissance tradition's feeling for the body as a functioning whole, not an assemblage of delicious parts. Goya sees his nude as he sees the women in his portraits - as a doll.

The Age of Imagination: Japanese Art from the Price Collection

June 22, 2008–September 14, 2008
Pavilion for Japanese Art and Hammer Building, LACMA

The Etsuko and Joe Price Collection is world-renowned for its collection of Japanese paintings of the Edo Period (1615–1868) featuring screens, hanging scrolls and fan format paintings. The Price Collection reflects the eclectic diversity of a remarkably creative span in Japan's history of visual art and is highlighted by some of the finest examples of the distinctive and compelling renderings of animal life by Ito Jakuchu (1716–1800), an artist who caught Joe Price’s eye five decades ago, when the artist was fairly unknown. The collection also features Kansai-region artists such as Maruyama Okyo, Nagasawa Rosetsu, and Mori Sosen, and artists of the Edo Rimpa school including Sakai Hoitsu and Suzuki Kiitsu. The exhibition has been on a four-city tour in Japan with enormous success; it was the highest attended exhibition in the world in 2006.

This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was made possible in part by LACMA’s Wallis Annenberg Director’s Endowment Fund.

Chaffey College Mixer

Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum presents
Chaffey College Mixer:
an exhibition of work by Chaffey College Art Faculty and Staff
February 21-March 5, 2008
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 21, 5-7 p.m.

Exhibition in VA 106 and the
Dutton Family Gallery at the Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum

Parking available in lots M, A or L; permit $4
Special permits for lot M available at the museum front desk.
Permits for other lots available in drive-up dispensers or at the
Information pyramid at the CSUSB campus entrance

Museum Hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Thursday: 10 a.m.-7 p.m.
Friday, Saturday: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Phone: (909) 537-7373 Fax: (909) 537-7068
Address: 5500 University Parkway
San Bernardino, CA 92407-2318

Love, Guerrilla Girls

Click on image to enlarge this letter addressed to the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA from the Guerrilla Girls.

Update: Read Jodie Cavalier's review of BCAM in Blank Canvas.

The Great Southern Gate Destroyed

South Korea's most valued national treasure, the Namdaemun or "Great Southern Gate," was severely damaged by fire on February 10, 2008.

Built between 1395 and 1398, the monument is one of three gates built into the walls that once fortified the city of Seoul. The Namdaemun was considered the oldest wooden structure in the city.

Fire authorities believe the blaze was set by 69 year old Chae Jong-gi , a man who had previously been charged with setting a fire at Chnggyeoung Palace in 2006. The man has confessed to the crime, stating that he set fire to the historic gate with paint thinner and disposable lighters after not being paid in full for land that he recently sold to developers.

South Korean officials estimate that it will take three years to rebuild the wooden structure on top of the stone foundation and that restoration will cost about $21 million. President elect Lee Myung-bak has called for private donations to fund the rebuilding effort.

For more on the loss of this significant artistic treasure, see: http://news.bbc.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7238210.stm/

Smuggled Basquiat Painting Found

The New York Sun:

An $8 million painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat that had been smuggled out of Brazil and presumed missing [since 2005] has been found in an Upper East Side warehouse.

The 1982 acrylic oil collage, entitled "Hannibal," could now be returned to Brazil, where it is the subject of a court dispute.

The last-known owner of the painting is a Brazilian banker, Edemar Cid Ferreira, who is now serving a 21-year prison sentence in that country on fraud charges after his bank, Banco Santos, collapsed. A Brazilian court seized his art collection to pay off his debts, but the painting had already been smuggled out of the country.

The painting entered New York through John F. Kennedy International Airport, and customs authorities tracked it to a warehouse at 61st Street and Second Avenue.

A document filed by federal prosecutors in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that outlines the painting's travels does not indicate who brought it here.

Art worth $163.2M stolen from Zurich museum

ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) —

Three armed men in ski masks stole four paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet worth $163.2 million from a Zurich museum in one of Europe's largest ever art heists, police said Monday.

The robbers, who were still at large, stole the paintings Sunday from the E.G. Buehrle Collection, one of Europe's finest private museums for Impressionist and post-Impressionist art, police said.

"Poppies near Vetheuil" (1879), by Claude Monet

"Boy in a Red Jacket" (1888), by Paul Cezanne

The Etiquette Set

The etiquette set by Edward Vince:

The etiquette set is a complete, packaged dining kit including instructions which allows the user to enjoy an à la Russe dining experience in any context, regardless of class or wealth.

It combines the semiotics of a plastic Airfix model kit with the implied luxury of an à la Russe table setting, using what is essentially wastage from the mould to structure the pieces in the correct position.

The set retains the detailing, form and visual language of the ornate silver cutlery and ceramic plate, and forces these values into the context of mass production and contemporary consumer culture through manufacture, material choice, packaging and method of use and disposal.

The design and realisation of this product is intended to comment on the loss of tradition, heritage and craftsmanship evident in the consumer culture of which we are part, and to question how and why we assign value to the different objects that surround us.

Museum to Buy Muhammad Cartoons

The Art Newspaper has reported that the Museum of Danish Cartoon Art in Copenhagen is currently in talks to acquire the twelve controversial Muhammad cartoons that were published in European newspapers two years ago.

Danish museum to buy Muhammad cartoons which sparked global riots

Three men are currently serving six-year jail terms in the UK for soliciting murder at a demonstration outside the Danish Embassy in London in February 2006. A fourth man was convicted of inciting race hate and jailed for four years. In Germany as we went to press, a Lebanese man is on trial, accused of planting suitcase bombs on a train in Cologne in July 2006. His alleged accomplice, Jihad Hamad, was given a 12-year sentence by a Beirut court for the same offense. Hamad told the Lebanese court that the bombs, which failed to explode, were planted in “revenge” for the publication of the cartoons. The Art Newspaper

Buy Your Own Banksy

A variety of Banksy works will be up for auction at Sotheby's in London on February 28th. Save your pennies.

Untitled (Happy Coppers)

Mona Lisa