Prehistoric art "no longer under threat".

March 28th, 2003

The primitive art of the Lascaux cave complex in south western France survived untouched for nearly 18,000 years but became extremely vulnerable when the cave mouth was widened in the 1950s to accommodate up to a thousand daily visitors.

Two years ago, experts noticed a fungus spreading gradually along the floor, walls and part of the ceiling. They tackled it with antifungal and antibiotic chemicals, but it was extremely resilient, and only now have scientists stopped it in its tracks.

However, after more than a year of decontamination the authorities say they have not managed to return the cave to its original state. The origin of the fungus continues to baffle scientists, partly because such careful measures have been taken to preserve the cave complex. It was closed to the public 40 years ago, after green algae started to grow on the walls - brought in by fresh air after the cave mouth was widened. An air-conditioning system was put in place to maintain the environment, but despite this the fungus took hold. Numerous fungicides and bactericides were used against it, but France's ministry of culture says it was "very hard to treat".

Agricultural pest
In a report in the French scientific journal La Recherche, scientists reveal that the fungus may have been introduced accidentally on the muddy boots of workmen overhauling the air-conditioning system. It is thought to be a member of the Fusarium family, which is a well-known agricultural pest.

Two years after the fungus was first spotted, the culture ministry has confirmed that the historic monument with its frescos of bulls, horses and Palaeolithic animals is no longer under threat. It says it has managed to contain the spread of the Fusarium, but still has to restore the cave's biological balance, which helped preserve the paintings in such remarkable condition for thousands of years. It plans to bring together scientific experts in a range of fields to learn exactly how climatic, chemical, biological and other forces come together inside the cave.

It hopes this multi-discipline group will be able to get rid of the remaining fungus and prevent future contamination.

Источник: news.bbc.co.uk

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Prosecutors Warn Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi.

March 28th, 2003

The Prosecutor General's Office summoned Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi on Tuesday to hand him an official warning that he faces criminal charges if he goes ahead with a plan to return an art collection to Germany.

The prosecutor's office, which has been investigating the matter over the past few weeks, said the Culture Ministry does not have the authority to decide to hand over the 362 drawings and two paintings that once belonged to the Bremen Kunsthalle. Deputy Prosecutor Vladimir Kolsenikov said Tuesday that Shvydkoi has not signed any orders to return the collection to Germany, but if he does he will be charged. It was not immediately clear which charges would be made.

Culture Ministry officials said Shvydkoi was unavailable for comment and said only he could speak about the issue. The ministry said last week that the art transfer was on hold after getting a first warning from prosecutors. But Shvydkoi at the time described his contacts with prosecutors as "positive" and said there was a common understanding that the art collection is different from other trophy art seized by Soviet troops in Germany at the end of World War II.

Shvydkoi said the Bremen Kunsthalle artwork was brought to Russia by an individual, Captain Viktor Baldin, and thus subject to the law on import and export of art rather than the law on the restitution of trophy art, which declares all such art Russian property.Shvydkoi told Ekho Mosvky radio last week that the plan had been to return the collection to Germany as a goodwill gesture, and Germany would have handed over 20 pieces of art selected by Hermitage Museum director Mikhail Piotrovsky. The plan, which was announced by Shvydkoi during a visit to Germany in early March, sparked an uproar in the State Duma. Deputies last Tuesday unanimously passed an appeal urging to President Vladimir Putin to stop the handover.

The head of the Duma's culture and tourism committee, Nikolai Gubenko, said the Baldin collection would be just the beginning. Baldin, an art restorer by profession, gave his collection to the Architecture Museum in 1948. He pioneered the trophy art debate in the early 1990s when he told of how he took part of the collection from the basement of an aristocratic hunting lodge and bought the rest from other soldiers. The collection includes pieces by Titian, DЯrer, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Rodin and Van Gogh.

Baldin repeatedly said he wanted the collection to be restored to its original owners in Bremen. He has since died. Shvydkoi said the collection is worth $30 million to $35 million. Gubenko put the value at $1.5 billion.

Источник: www.themoscowtimes.com

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Russian Works of Art again at Christie's

March 26th, 2003

Faberge rules again at Christie's this spring with an extraordinary, rare egg of pale green bowenite encircled by swirling diamond-set trelliswork that Tsar Alexander III gave to his wife, Maria Fedorovna, as an Easter gift in 1892.

Further magnificent pieces in a rich selection of Russian pictures and cloisonnй enamel include Young Ballerinas, an exquisite pastel depicting the inner world of female dancers by Zinaida Serebriakova, the most renowned Russian female artist; and Reverie, which captures the remarkable mystical quality on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine, by Nikolas Rourich.

Most significant among an impressive group of silver also in the sale is a museum-quality niello cartographic box from the reign of Catherine the Great that depicts the Battle of Chesme between the Turks and the Russians in 1770.

Источник: www.christies.com

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Don't be late to buy Barbizon, Realist & French Landscape Paintings.

March 26th, 2003

On 23 April 2003 you will have an opportunity to aquire a distinctive group of 19th century European paintings and sculptures. Among them outstanding works from major schools, reaffirms Christie's connoisseurship.

The centerpiece of the sale is a rare and early work by Jules Breton, Le retour des champs, exhibited at the Salon of 1867. Firmly grounded in the French realist tradition, the painting is a celebration of the enjoyment of the simple life and ranks as one of the artist's most captivating figural compositions.

Also featured is a previously undocumented L'Atelier de Corot by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, which belongs to the renowned and extremely rare series of atelier paintings that rank among the most complex and thematically rich works of Corot\'s entire production.

Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau's La becquйe is a virtuoso performance and represents the pinnacle of her technical achievements.

Collectors are sure to find real treasures among a group of works by such important 19th century masters as William Bouguereau, Daniel Ridgway Knight, Antonio Frilli, Antoine-Charles-Horace Vernet, Gustave Courbet and Julien Dupre.

Источник: www.christies.com

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Bay of Islands Arts Festival 2003

March 19th, 2003

The Bay of Islands Arts Festival 2003 has opened in New Zealand and will run through March 30. The festival features the exhibition titled “Hundertwasser” - ‘An exhibition of artworks on ecology, the environment and on art.’ Brought to you in association with the Rotary Club of Bay of Islands Inc. and the Hundertwasser Non-Profit Making Trust in Austria.

The exhibition will also feature donated works from the following local artists: Garth Tapper, Foster Clark – painter, Denise Corden – painter, Veronica Gell – multi media, Sandra-Jane Kupec – multi, Mike Nettman – painter, Rhona Swallow – print maker, Marea Timoko – glass artist, and Lena Zenkil – multi media.

An exhibition of the above artists works can be viewed a the Vege Stop, Cobham Rd, Kerikeri from 22 to 30 March, times 11am to 3pm daily, except Monday.

All works are available for sale. Funds raised from the Hundertwasser Exhibition in Kawakawa will go towards the production of a ‘self-help’ kit on bio-diversity for Northland landowners.

Источник: www.artdaily.com

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Kazimir Malevich's abstract paintings are exibited in Berlin, Germany.

March 19th, 2003

Kazimir Malevich has long been celebrated as one of the seminal founders of non-objective art in the 20th century. Between 1915 and 1932, he developed a system of abstract painting called Suprematism. To mark the 125th anniversary of Malevich’s birth, the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin is devoting an exhibition to this Russian artist running from 18 January to 27 April 2003. Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism is the first exhibition devoted exclusively to this decisive moment in the artist’s career. It presents paintings, drawings, and objects from important public and private collections all over the world. Among these, several works will be shown which have never been seen in the West, such as some of the recently rediscovered masterpieces by Malevich.

Malevich’s formulation of Suprematism evolved quickly. By late 1915-1916, it had shifted from an aesthetic of static composition into an ever more dynamic realm, exemplifying his desire to visually render different states of feeling and n-dimensionality. By 1917, however, he had returned to a vocabulary of simplicity, but this time anchored in less concrete form. The works are ethereal and seem to dissolve into imaginary space. Other works serve as an extensive dissertation on subtle transformation, as in Suprematism [Construction in Dissolution], which like the related White Square on White, would inspire a whole generation of contemporary artists in Europe and the US in the 1960s and 1970s.

Suprematism was also deployed into the realm of the practical, with Malevich experimenting with it as a means for social transformation through radical architectural form, in plaster studies he called Architektons. He also engaged in political art, conforming to the need to serve a new political reality while trying to remain faithful to his aesthetics, as well as venturing into the decorative and applied arts, like so many of his comrades and students.

Essentially Malevich remains a painter, and one who was completely devoted to the spiritual in art. This adherence to the metaphysical during a time of increasingly volatile social upheaval in Russia, where art became increasingly tied to the rigors of political process, ultimately led to the artist’s isolation from the artistic vanguard. By the late 1920s, he folded Suprematism into an investigation of the figure, before completely abandoning it in 1932 for an art steeped in Renaissance portraiture.

Источник: www.artdaily.com

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Albrecht Duerer is in the British Museum

March 11th, 2003

Albrecht Duerer (1471–1528) was in a sense the first truly international artist. He was certainly the first who saw how to exploit the new technologies of printing to ensure that his works were known and sought after not just in his own country but across the whole of Europe, making him the great master of the multiple image and an international celebrity. The AD monogram became a trademark recognised and respected world-wide. His drawings and his prints, on which his reputation was built, are at the heart of this exhibition, the first to be devoted to him in Britain for more than 30 years.

As a prelude to the Museum’s 250th anniversary year in 2003, the exhibition will celebrate the superlative collection of Duerer prints, drawings and watercolours in The British Museum, many of which were Sir Hans Sloane’s original bequest to the Museum in 1753. In addition, there will be a number of outstanding loans, including the National Gallery’s Saint Jerome, and drawings of prime importance from the Ashmolean Museum, the Royal Collection, the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin and the Albertina in Vienna. Two superb drawings, the Albertina's Self-portrait as a thirteen-year old and the world famous Praying Hands, have never before been displayed in this country. The aim of the exhibition is to examine Duerer's extraordinary achievements as a draughtsman and printmaker during his own lifetime and to look at how the artist's widely-disseminated and innovative imagery influenced artists and craftsmen for centuries to come.

The exhibition begins with an examination of the artist’s revolutionary approaches to self-portraiture and looks at the differing ways that other artists have represented and constructed his image over the centuries. The next sections follow the chronology of Duerer's life, with an emphasis on a particular period or project in each.

They include his early years in Nuremberg; his first visit to Italy which stimulated him to produce the earliest-known group of watercolour landscapes drawn from nature to have survived in the history of western art; the production of his virtuoso engraving Adam and Eve in 1504 with its numerous related studies; his work for the Emperor Maximilian including the massive Triumphal Arch – one of the largest prints ever produced - and his three enigmatic master prints of 1513-1514, Knight, Death and the Devil, Melancholia and St Jerome in his Study. The following sections show the impact of Duerer's work on other artists, including Germany, Holland and Italy (Rembrandt among them), and his long-standing influence on ceramic designs from 16th century maiolica to 18th century Meissen. A focus on the late 16th and early 17th century phenomenon known as the Duerer Renaissance, largely created by the scarcity of the master's work, shows how glossy pastiches and elegant copies of his work became so highly sought after that artists such as Hans Hoffmann became well-known primarily for their skill at producing them.

The exhibition concludes with Duerer's legacy in the 19th century, particularly the way in which his work was interpreted by Romantic artists such as Caspar David Friedrich. Amid the rise of German nationalism, Duerer's name and art began to achieve a virtually iconic status and a final section looks at how the artist became an object of almost religious veneration in the elaborate festivals celebrating the anniversaries of his birth and death dates of 1828 and 1871.

Источник: www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk

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