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George Tooker Dies at 90 ~ Social Realism Painter & National Medal of Arts Winner
'Miró' At The Tate Modern ~ The First Retrospective of Miró in the UK in 50 Years
National Gallery of Victoria to show European Masters from the Stadel Museum
Works by Phyllis Bramson & Judith Geichman at Carrie Secrist Gallery
Apollo Theater Exhibit in Washington D.C. Shows Where Stars Shined
Cézanne Collection at the Courtauld Institute of Art’s 75th Anniversary
Royal Academy of Arts announces Exhibition by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797 – 1861)
Guy Hepner Contemporary Presents ~ Photos by Mark Seliger
Marlborough Presents an Exhibition of New Works by Paul Hodgson
The Royal Ontario Museum to Host "Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008"
Arken Museum to Show Impressionists & Postimpressionists from The Israel Museum
Masterpieces from The Museum of Fine Arts Boston Travel to Tokyo
Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) to host William Holman Hunt & the Pre-Raphaelite Vision
Exceptional Impressionist Show at the Lady Lever Art Gallery
Stephen Parmley – Painter/Sculptor - at The ArtHouse
This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News
George Tooker Dies at 90 ~ Social Realism Painter & National Medal of Arts Winner
Posted: 31 Mar 2011 12:03 AM PDT

New York, NY - One of the most acclaimed painters of his generation, George Tooker (1920-2011) possessed an originality and depth of vision that is unsurpassed in modern American art. For over sixty years, he has been highly regarded for his luminous and often enigmatic work. His themes range from alienation and the dehumanizing aspects of contemporary society to personal meditations on the human condition. Tooker began his career at a time when the prevailing aesthetic was "modernism" and the darlings of the art world were American minimalists. Tooker, however, was clear from the beginning that he had no interest in minimalist art, very much to the contrary, he was instead bent on creating "maximalist" art. He has said that "in one kind of painting I'm trying to say 'this is what we are forced to suffer in life,' while in other paintings I say 'this is what we should be.'" Tooker first came to prominence for imaginative visions that expressed the uncertainty of the Cold War era. Among his best-known paintings is "Subway" (1950, Whitney Museum of American Art), a powerful work that explores the anxiety and isolation of nameless individuals in urban society.

He was very involved with the Civil Rights Movement as well, in one instance marching in Selma, Alabama, with Dr. Martin Luther King in 1965, and frequently addressed issues of race and oppression in his work. In addition to his engagement with social commentary, Tooker also created strikingly beautiful paintings of a more personal nature, many of which are concerned with states of consciousness, mysterious meditative realms between sleep and wakefulness. His good friend Lincoln Kirstein once characterized his work as Magic Realism, which has since been frequently used to describe his paintings. Tooker never cared much for that designation, however, because of the connotations of fantasy and Surrealism. “I am after painting reality impressed on the mind so hard that it returns as a dream, but I am not after painting dreams as such, or fantasy,” he once said. Tooker died at his home in Hartland, Vermont, on Sunday, March 27 at the age of ninety. The cause was kidney failure according to DC Moore Gallery, New York, which represents the artist.


George Claire Tooker, Jr. was born August 5, 1920, in Brooklyn New York. He was the first child of a Cuban-American mother and a father who was a municipal bond broker. Tooker's only sibling, Mary, was born later. Shortly after his birth the Tooker family moved to the more rural Bellport in south-central Long Island, some fifty miles east of New York City. The trajectory of his life began to manifest itself from the age of seven, when he began taking painting lessons from Malcolm Fraser, a family friend whose oeuvre was in the Barbizon tradition. Tooker began high school in Bellport. However, his parents weren't much impressed with the quality of the school, and he spent his last two years at the more rigorously academic Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, north of Boston. George developed an intense dislike of the straight-laced school, with its orientation toward business and finance, and its concern that its students learn to hide their emotions. He gravited instead toward the school's art studio, where he worked at landscape drawing and watercolors. By virtue of its location, Andover did furnish some additional, if unintended education - Tooker became aware of effects of the Depression on the mill towns north of Andover. He was angered by the sharp contrast between the comfortable lifestyle of the children of the economic elite who attended the academy, and the many unemployed.

After graduation from Phillips in 1938, Tooker went on to Harvard, where he majored in English literature, that having been the only academic subject of interest to him at Phillips. Yet he spent much of his time at the Fogg Art Museum, and in the towns surrounding Boston, where he made watercolor sketches of the urban and rural landscapes. The Fogg's holdings include early Italian Renaissance, pre-Raphaelite and 19th-century French art. He also took up with some radical political organizations, but soon found them doctrinaire and boring. Nevertheless, it was during this time that he first became interested in the potential of art as a tool for social justice. Especially inspirational was the work of Mexican painters, especially David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco. Graduating from Harvard in 1942, he immediately enlisted in the Marine Corps Officer's Candidate School, but an old stomach ailment turned serious, and he was discharged after a few months there. Now at loose ends, Tooker decided to pursue his long-standing desire to study art. Securing his parent's support, he enrolled in the Art Students League in New York. Here he studied for two years with Reginald Marsh who worked in egg tempera, Kenneth Hayes Miller who also taught Edward Hopper, and Harry Sternberg.


In 1944 Tooker met the painter Paul Cadmus. Cadmus was another painter who worked with egg tempera (using traditional Reanissance techniques), and transmitted this expertise to Tooker, whose use of this medium marks his mature style. A year later, with the financial support of his family, George moved to a flat on the bohemian Bleecker Street in Greewich Village, New York. In 1949 Cadmus and Tooker spent six months travelling in Italy and France; and in the same year George met painter William Christopher, who was to become his life partner until Christopher's death in 1973. In 1950 Tooker and Christopher moved into an illegal loft located at W. 18th St. Here, in order to support themselves, they made custom furniture. However, Tooker was beginning to earn both recognition and income from his art, the Whitney Museum bought his best-known painting, "The Subway", that year, he had a one-man exhibition in New York City in 1951, in 1954 he received a commission to design sets for an opera and in 1955 he held his second one-man show. With greater means as their disposal, the two first bought and renovated a brownstone on State Street in Brooklyn Heights and then, in the late 1950s, he and Christopher built a weekend home near Hartland, Vermont. The one-man shows in New York galleries picked up speed, Tooker having his own exhibitions in 1960, 1962, 1964 and 1967. Christopher died in Spain in 1973, and Tooker spent most of 1974 there, wrapping up disposition of his estate. Also in '73, a major survey exhibition of Tooker's work was organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. That exhibition traveled to Chicago, New York, and Indianapolis. In 1976 Tooker became a Roman Catholic, and attended St. Francis of Assisi Church. After it burned down, he created a major painting for it, The Seven Sacraments. Until his death, Tooker lived and worked in in Harland, Vermont.

George Tooker is represented in museum collections across the country, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and National Museum of American Art. He has had numerous museum exhibitions over the years, such as a retrospective, George Tooker: Paintings, 1947-1973, organized by the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, California, in 1974; George Tooker: Paintings and Working Drawings at the Marsh Gallery, University of Richmond, Virginia, in 1989; 50 Years of Painting and Study Drawings at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1994; and George Tooker: A Retrospective at the National Academy Museum, New York, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, in 2008-09. His most recent exhibition was George Tooker: Studies for Paintings at DC Moore Gallery, New York, in 2009. He received the prestigious National Medal of Arts in 2007.

Tooker is survived by a sister, Mary Tooker Graham; her children, Peter and Russell Hume, and Angus and Angela Graham; and family members, Aaron Watkins and Sheila Adams, and Robert and Robin Watkins.


'Miró' At The Tate Modern ~ The First Retrospective of Miró in the UK in 50 Years
Posted: 31 Mar 2011 12:02 AM PDT

London.- Joan Miró's works come to London in the first major retrospective to be held in the UK for nearly 50 years. Renowned as one of the greatest Surrealist painters, filling his paintings with luxuriant colour, Miró worked in a rich variety of styles. This is a rare opportunity to enjoy more than 150 paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints from moments across the six decades of his extraordinary career. 'Miró' will be on view at The Tate Modern from April 14th until September 11th 2011.

Joan Miró is among the most iconic of modern artists, using a language of symbols that reflects his personal vision, sense of freedom, and energy. The exhibition includes many of the key works that we know and love. It also shows that, behind the engaging innocence of his imagery, lies a profound concern for humanity and a sense of personal and national identity. Extraordinary works from different moments of his career celebrate his roots in his native Catalonia. The exhibition also traces an anxious and politically engaged side to Miró’s work that reflects his passionate response to one of the most turbulent periods in European history. Working in Barcelona and Paris, Miró tracked the mood of the Spanish Civil War and the first months of the Second World War in France.

Under the political restrictions of Franco's Spain, Miró remained a symbol of international culture, and his grand abstract paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s became a mark of resistance and integrity in the dying years of the regime. Telling the story of Miró's life and the time he witnessed reveals a darker intensity to many of his works. This is a must-see exhibition for 2011, filled with astonishing, beautiful and striking paintings by one of the greats of modern art.


Located in central London on the banks of the river Thames, the Tate Modern is one of the family of four Tate galleries which display selections from the Tate Collection (named for Sir Henry Tate, a Victorian sugar merchant, whose donation formed the basis of the modern collection). Created in 2000 from a disused power station, the Tate Modern displays the national collection of international modern art, defined as art since 1900. By about 1990 it was clear that the Tate Collection had hugely outgrown the original Tate Gallery on Millbank. It was decided to create a new gallery in London to display the international modern component of the Tate Collection. For the first time London would have a dedicated museum of modern art. The Bankside power station had closed in 1982 and was available, a striking and distinguished building in its own right, it was in an amazing location on the south bank of the River Thames opposite St Paul's Cathedral and the City of London. An international architectural competition was held attracting entries from practices all over the world.

The final choice was Herzog and De Meuron, a relatively small and then little known Swiss firm (who have subsequently won the Pritzker Prize). A key factor in this choice was that their proposal retained much of the essential character of the building. The power station was originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who also created Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral, University libraries in Oxford and Cambridge, Waterloo Bridge, and the design of the famous British red telephone box. The Tate Modern opened in 2000 and became an instant hit with visitors from worldwide. Designed to handle up to 2 million visitors a year, it rapidly became the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 5 million visitors every year. Further expansion of the gallery has been a priority for some time, and a new extension is scheduled to open in 2012. Also designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the new extension will take the form of a ziggurat or pyramid with a sloping brick facade to match the original building.


When completed, this will include galleries dedicated to photography, video, exhibitions and the community. The Tate collection of modern and contemporary art represents all the major movements from Fauvism onward. It includes important masterpieces by both Picasso and Matisse and one of the world's finest museum collections of Surrealism, including works by Dalí, Ernst, Magritte and Mirò. Its substantial holdings of American Abstract Expressionism include major works by Pollock as well as the nine Seagram Murals by Mark Rothko. There is an in depth collection of the Russian pioneer of abstract art Naum Gabo, and an important group of sculpture and paintings by Giacometti. Tate has significant collections of Pop Art, including major works by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, also great examples of Minimal and Conceptual art. Tate also has particularly rich holdings of contemporary art since the 1980's. Be sure to visit the museum’s website at: … http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/








National Gallery of Victoria to show European Masters from the Stadel Museum
Posted: 31 Mar 2011 12:01 AM PDT


MELBOURNE, AU - Premier John Brumby today announced a new blockbuster exhibition, European Masters: Städel Collection 19th – 20th Centuries will come to the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in 2010 as part of the hugely successful Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series. Mr Brumby said the exhibition comprises more than 100 works from the internationally renowned Städel Museum in Germany by artists including Monet, Cézanne and Renoir, and is the first time this collection of works will be displayed outside Europe. European Masters: Städel Collection 19th – 20th Centuries will be on at the NGV International, St Kilda Road from 19 June until 10 October 2010


Works by Phyllis Bramson & Judith Geichman at Carrie Secrist Gallery
Posted: 31 Mar 2011 12:00 AM PDT


CHICAGO, IL.- The Carrie Secrist Gallery presents, Then is Now, a dual exhibition featuring works by Phyllis Bramson and Judith Geichman. The exhibit will open on March 20th and run through April 24th. Both Bramson and Geichman are interested in unconventional beauty and a certain kind of visual clarity in their work. Additionally, they share several common sources including including Chinoiserie, Toile de Jou, Chinese scholar rocks, Rococo, abstraction, and elements of collage.


Apollo Theater Exhibit in Washington D.C. Shows Where Stars Shined
Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:58 PM PDT


Washington, DC - Michael Jackson's fedora, Ella Fitzgerald's yellow dress and Louis Armstrong's trumpet are together in a Smithsonian exhibit celebrating the famed Apollo Theater that helped these stars to shine. The not-yet-built National Museum of African American History and Culture is bringing New York's Harlem to the nation's capital with the first-ever exhibit focused on the Apollo, where many musical careers were launched. It opens Friday at the National Museum of American History. About 100 items are on view, representing big names from entertainment today and from decades past.


Cézanne Collection at the Courtauld Institute of Art’s 75th Anniversary
Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:57 PM PDT



London - The Courtauld Gallery holds the finest group of works by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) in Britain. As the culmination of The Courtauld Institute of Art’s 75th anniversary, the Gallery is showing the entire collection together for the first time. The importance of the collection lies not only in its exceptionally high quality but also in its wide range, with seminal paintings, drawings and watercolours from the major periods of the artist’s long career. The Courtauld Cézannes, on view from 26 June to 5 October 2008, will be the first opportunity to enjoy this extraordinary collection in its entirety.



Royal Academy of Arts announces Exhibition by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797 – 1861)
Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:55 PM PDT


LONDON - The Royal Academy of Arts will present an exhibition on one of the greatest Japanese print artists, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797 – 1861). Featuring over 150 works, the exhibition will present Kuniyoshi as a master of imaginative design. It will reveal the graphic power and beauty of his prints across an unprecedented range of subjects highlighting his ingenuous use of the triptych format. The majority of the exhibition will be drawn from the outstanding collection of Professor Arthur R. Miller which has recently been donated to the American Friends of the British Museum. This is the first major exhibition in the United Kingdom on Utagawa Kuniyoshi since 1961, on view 21 March through 7 June, 2009.


Guy Hepner Contemporary Presents ~ Photos by Mark Seliger
Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:53 PM PDT


WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA.- Photographer Mark Seliger's 2002 "Heidi Does Hollywood" series for GQ is now for sale at Guy Hepner Contemporary. As one most celebrated editorial photographers of today, Mark Seliger has had the rare opportunity to photograph the world's most famous faces. Mark Seliger is currently under contract with Conde Nast Publications where he has shot countless covers for Vanity Fair and GQ. In 2002, Mark Seliger created a stunning collection of photographs for GQ of Heidi Klum.


Marlborough Presents an Exhibition of New Works by Paul Hodgson
Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:51 PM PDT


LONDON.- “Taken all together, Paul Hodgson’s six new pictures make a powerful address to perennial questions about the self and its ability to articulate an identity, and about faith and its reasonable limits” – Andrew Motion. Hodgson’s new works are concerned with exploring different kinds of uncertainty as a key to pictorial narrative; ‘keys to narrative rather than narrative itself’ he says.


The Royal Ontario Museum to Host "Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008"
Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:50 PM PDT


TORONTO.- The Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) presents Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008 from September 26, 2009 to January 3, 2010. The exhibition, which garnered record-breaking attendance in its recent European engagements, showcases 150 portraits, including classic images from Vanity Fair’s early period and photographs featured in the magazine since its 1983 relaunch. A collaboration between Vanity Fair and the National Portrait Gallery, London, the exhibition is curated by Terence Pepper, Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, and David Friend, Vanity Fair’s Editor of Creative Development. Vanity Fair Portraits is presented by the Bay and will be displayed in the Roloff Beny Gallery on Level 4 of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. The ROM will be the only Canadian venue to display Vanity Fair Portraits, and this will be its first showing in eastern North America.


Arken Museum to Show Impressionists & Postimpressionists from The Israel Museum
Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:49 PM PDT


COPENHAGEN.- They caused an outrage when they appeared. Today they rank among the most reproduced, popular and priceless artists in the world. Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Rodin, van Gogh, Cézanne, Braque. They can all be seen at Arken Museum of Modern Art. Arken presents the fine collection of French Impressionists and Postimpressionists from The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. 53 paintings and sculptures come to Denmark for four months in the exhibition Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin. On view 31 January through 7 June, 2009.


Masterpieces from The Museum of Fine Arts Boston Travel to Tokyo
Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:47 PM PDT


TOKYO.- The pictorial treasures of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston are being shown in Tokyo, in a major exhibition that explores five centuries of European art made by masters such as Rembrandt, Velazquez, El Greco, Picasso and Van Gogh. The exhibition takes place at the Mori Art Center in Japan's capital, where the visitor is greeted at the entrance by two pictures, Velasquez’ "Luis de Gongora y Argote (1622), and " Victorine Meurent "(1862) by Edouard Manet, as evidence of the influence that the first painter had on the second.


Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) to host William Holman Hunt & the Pre-Raphaelite Vision
Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:43 PM PDT


Minneapolis, MN - The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), offers visitors a rare glimpse into the life and work of 19th-century painter William Holman Hunt, with an exhibition of more than 60 iconic works by the artist who is considered to be the founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and has been deemed by some as the Damien Hirst of his day. “Sin and Salvation: Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision” opens June 14, and on view through September 6, 2009, with the MIA as the sole U.S. venue.


Exceptional Impressionist Show at the Lady Lever Art Gallery
Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:38 PM PDT

LIVERPOOL, UK - Renoir, Monet, Vuillard, Degas, and Rodin are amongst some of the artists to be featured in a significant new exhibition for 2009 at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. In an international exchange made possible by the generous loan of works from the Nationalmuseum Stockholm, French Impressionists will run from 20 February to 31 May at the Port Sunlight Gallery famed for its own extensive collection of British Art.


Stephen Parmley – Painter/Sculptor - at The ArtHouse
Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:37 PM PDT

Belfast, Maine - Saturday, August 19th from 4 to 7p.m. there will be an opening reception for painter, sculptor, Stephen R. Parmley. The exhibition will feature oil paintings, works on paper and sculpture. This exhibit will be hosted by well known master painter Harold Garde and his daughter Elissa Garde-Joia at their home The ArtHouse at 41 Court Street, Belfast, behind the purple door.


This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News
Posted: 30 Mar 2011 11:36 PM PDT
This is a new feature for the subscribers and visitors to Art Knowledge News (AKN), that will enable you to see "thumbnail descriptions" of the last ninety (90) articles and art images that we published. This will allow you to visit any article that you may have missed ; or re-visit any article or image of particular interest. Every day the article "thumbnail images" will change. For you to see the entire last ninety images just click : here .

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