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Constantin Brancusi at the Tate Modern
January 30th, 2004 LONDON.- The exhibition Constantin Brancusi: The Essence of Things is currently on view at the Tate Modern, until May 23, 2004. Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) was one of the founding figures of modern sculpture and one of the most original artists of the twentieth-century. His groundbreaking carvings introduced abstraction and primitivism into sculpture for the first time, and were as important as Picasso’s paintings to the development of modern art. This exhibition, sponsored by Aviva plc, will bring together more than thirty of Brancusi’s sculptures and, remarkably, will be the first major exhibition in the UK dedicated to his works.
Brancusi’s serenely simplified sculptures are widely acknowledged as icons of modernism. His choice of materials including marble and limestone, bronze and wood, and his individual expression through carving, established him as a leading avant-garde artist. He was a close friend of both Amedeo Modigliani and Marcel Duchamp.
Brancusi was born in Romania in 1876 and studied in Bucharest. In 1904 he moved to Paris, where he was to spend more than fifty years and where, from the mid 1920s, he established his studio as the calm backdrop to his work. He was encouraged by Auguste Rodin but, from 1907, he began a process of simplifying his figures to the point of abstraction. Forms of great purity and balance resulted from this refinement.
This exhibition will capture the essential character of Brancusi’s sculpture. It will be highly selective in nature, with an acute awareness of the artist’s choice of materials, themes and series. The majority of the works will be in stone and marble. They include The Kiss 1907-8, the groundbreaking work in which Brancusi first achieved a balance between recognisable bodies and the integrity of the stone block in which they are carved. A group of sculptures of single heads will show the reduction of incidental detail that culminates in the simple ovoid, The Beginning of the World 1920.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.artdaily.com íàâåðõ | 
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Claude Monet at the Bellagio Gallery of Art January 30th, 2004 LAS VEGAS, NEVADA.- The exhibition Claude Monet Masterworks from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is currently on view at the Bellagio Hotel Gallery of Art.
For the first time in over a decade the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has agreed to loan the majority of the paintings from its world-renowned Monet collection. Claude Monet, born in 1840, was a leader among the circle of 19th century French painters known as the Impressionists. He made his life’s singular mission to capture the essence of nature and light with nothing more than paint and canvas. This pursuit would result in more than a new way of painting; it would change the very notion of what art is.
Claude Monet: Masterworks from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston presents works spanning fifty years of the artist’s career and features many of his most recognizable and important paintings including Camille Monet and a Child in the Artist’s Garden in Argenteuil (1875), Grainstack (1891), two works from Monet’s famous series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral - Rouen Cathedral Façade and Tour d’Albane (Morning effect) (1894) and Rouen Cathedral, Façade (1894), and two later masterpieces from the artist’s garden at Giverny- Water Lilies (1905) and The Water Lily Pond (1900), which features Monet’s signature Japanese footbridge, one of the most recognizable images in the history of Western Art.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.artdaily.com íàâåðõ | 
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Helmut Newton museum to open in Berlin
January 30th, 2004 BERLIN— A Berlin museum to showcase the work of Helmut Newton will open in June despite the photographer's death in a car crash last Friday, says the foundation in charge of the project.
"The planned opening, which Helmut Newton had looked forward to with great joy, will be a day of remembrance for one of the most important photographers of our time," said the Prussian Culture Foundation, which oversees Berlin museums.
Newton, whose stark, often sadomasochistic portraits of nude women in chains and bonds won him acclaim and revulsion, was killed in a car accident in Hollywood.
Newton, 83, was pulling out of a parking lot at the Chateau Marmont Hotel just off Sunset Blvd. at about noon when he lost control of the Cadillac he was driving and crashed into a wall, Los Angeles Police Department officer April Harding said.
The car sustained major damage, and Newton died of his injuries a short time later at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, she said, adding the accident remained under investigation. No one else was reported hurt in the wreck.
The accident brought to an abrupt end a celebrated photography career spanning eight decades.
Born Helmut Neustaedter in 1920 in Berlin to Jewish parents, Newton was apprenticed to society photographer Yva in 1936 and fled Germany two years later for Singapore. He then settled in Australia, where he served in the army and worked as a fashion photographer before returning to Europe in 1957. After making his home in Paris for many years, he moved to Monte Carlo in 1980.
Admittedly colour blind, he once joked that his difficulty distinguishing yellow from green and green from blue was "why I take very good colour pictures."
But it was the often shocking, coldly stylistic nature of his images, gracing the pages of Vogue, Elle and other fashion and high-style magazines, for which Newton was renowned.
His specialty was sharply focused female nudes, often Amazonian women with hints of sexual deviancy, danger and fetishism.
He photographed women in dog collars, chains, leg splints, wheelchairs, and even saddles.
In one notorious shot that outraged Italian jeweller Bulgari, he photographed their diamonds and sapphires on the wrists of a model engaged in dismembering a chicken.
Men in his photos typically appeared in servile roles, as waiters, chauffeurs or mere onlookers.
Among his more famous subjects was model-actress Nastassia Kinski, whom he shot for Playboy in 1983, posed with a Marlene Dietrich doll.
"It was difficult to get her to take her clothes off. She's a very intelligent girl, very intense, very bright," Newton later recalled.
His work outraged many and feminists protested one of his exhibits by throwing paint on his photos. But in a 1998 interview with Internet magazine Salon.com, Newton declared he was through taking photographs of naked women, saying, "I just had a bellyful and realized I had shot enough nudes to last a lifetime. ... In fact, although I have no idea of the number, I think I photographed too many naked women."
Èñòî÷íèê: www.reuters.com íàâåðõ | |
Gary Hume: The Bird Had a Yellow Beak. 2004-01-26 until 2004-03-21 in Kunsthaus Bregenz
January 27th, 2004 Following solo exhibitions of the work of Günther Förg and Jeff Koons, the Kunsthaus Bregenz now continues its discourse on major positions in contemporary painting with Gary Hume’s oeuvre. With nearly 60 works from the late eighties till the present, the exhibition at the Kunsthaus Bregenz is one of the largest one-man shows by the artist and the first comprehensive exhibition in the German-speaking world to date. 25 large-format paintings, more than 30 drawings, and one sculpture provide a sweeping look at the work of this important representative of the Young British Art scene.
In the eighties, Gary Hume (born in 1962 in Kent, England) became a star of the Young British Art movement virtually overnight with his "Doors" series. The series comprises some 50 works to date. The Kunsthaus Bregenz shows a representative selection, including "Door," 1988, one of the earliest works in the series, "Dream," 1991, "Girl Boy, Boy Girl," 1991, and "All He Knows," 2000. Format and formal structure of these largely several-part paintings assembled in a row and done on MDF or canvas are based on real doors to be found in public institutions, such as hospitals, schools, etc. With these rows of door images and their sparse depiction, Gary Hume makes reference to the heroes of the color-field, hard-edge, and shaped-canvas movements of the sixties and seventies in America.
As early as 1949, Ellsworth Kelly in one of his key works, "Window, Museum of Modern Art, Paris," had made the proportions and dimensions of a window of the said Paris museum the point of departure of his anti-compositional work on two combined canvases. In addition to his well known door paintings, Gary Hume has also done a whole series of window paintings. Hume’s toying with art historical references and his sense of humor also become evident, for example, in the fact that the round window openings and rectangular door handles of the door panels call to mind the abstract Mickey Mouse of the famous steel sculpture "Geometric Mouse, Scale A," 1969, by Claes Oldenburg. In "Welcome," 2002, the artist turns the door painting into a Smiley by adding a semicircular line to the two round windows. Hume gives the abstract elements and forms of his paintings – square, rectangle, and circle – double meanings: the paintings can be windows or doors or they can be faces.
An entire floor at the Kunsthaus has been devoted to Gary Hume’s drawing, which is still less known than his painting. Among his finest works are his plant and flower drawings. One might trace back their elegance, delicate lines, and simple means to the arabesques of a Henri Matisse or to Ellsworth Kelly’s famous plant drawings.
Gary Hume has developed a unique painting technique for rendering his ideas onto surfaces. He uses common commercial household paints in premixed hues, which he pours onto his horizontal work surfaces. To achieve a smooth, even result, he uses aluminum panels. Generally speaking, one has to see Gary Hume’s paintings in the original in order to experience the full effect. The luster and reflective quality of the gloss paint, the often very close hues, the embedded relief drawings discernible only in sidelight do not lend themselves readily to reproduction through photographic and printing means – a strategy to "Save Painting."
Èñòî÷íèê: www.absolutearts.com íàâåðõ | 
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Crash kills renowned photographer Helmut Newton January 27th, 2004 Fashion photographer Helmut Newton has died at the age of 83 after a car crash in Los Angeles.
Mr Newton was pulling out of the car park at a Hollywood hotel when he lost control of his Cadillac limousine.
The hotel, which is just off Sunset Boulevard, is a favourite haunt of many of the stars he photographed.
Known for his erotic black and white images, Mr Newton's work appeared in some of the world's best known magazines such as Playboy and Vogue.
According to an eyewitness, his vehicle accelerated rapidly and crashed into a wall across the street from the hotel. He was taken to hospital but died shortly after arriving.
Mr Newton, who was Jewish, was born in Berlin in 1920. He fled Germany for Singapore in 1938 and eventually settled in Australia where he became a citizen.
He then moved to Monte Carlo. He gained worldwide notoriety for his stylish, sometimes sado-masochistic portraits of naked women.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.bbc.co.uk íàâåðõ | 
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Fernand Khnoppff at Royal Museums of Fine Arts
January 23rd, 2004 BRUSSELS, BELGIUM.- An important retrospective of the work of Fernand Khnoppff (1858-1921), a major artist and leader of the Belgian Symbolist movement, has been organized by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Belgium.
Several hitherto unknown works will be shown for the first time.
Exhibition dates are as follows: From January 16 to May 9, 2004, Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 17:00. Thursday evenings until 21:00. Closed Mondays and May 1st.
Fernand Khnopff (Greembergen 1858 – Brussels 1921,) son of an old cosmopolitan family, lived in Bruges for most of his childhood. The atmosphere of this somber and decadent city had a strong influence on the young aspiring artist, which he would endeavor to capture later on in his work. His favorite model was his sister Marguerite, born in 1864. In 1866 the family moved to Brussels, where Khnopff’s father was appointed a judge. He started studying law at the Université libre of Brussels to please his father, and at that time he developed a passion for French literature. Shortly after he quit the university and began learning the rudiments of painting in Xavier Mellery’s studio. He took drawing lessons at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts from 1876 and 1879, together with James Ensor.
He exhibited for the first time at the L´essor Salon in Brussels in 1881. From the 1880’s onwards he began exhibiting in England, and in London he met pre-Raphaelites Hunt, Watts, Ford Maddox Brown and Burne-Jones. He began writing articles for The Studio, the leading British art magazine, and introduced may Belgian artists and exhibitions o the British public. In 1891, at the first Secession exhibition in Viena he exhibited 21 works, an event that brought him international fame.
Khnopff reveals himself as a particularly multi-faceted artist: he worked not only in oils, pastels and mixed techniques, but was also a sculptor and engraver. He also produced excellent photographs of his work, enhanced with pastels or colored crayons. At the end of his life he was in constant demand, and illustrated programs for many charities and patriotic events. His work can be admired in leading museums worldwide.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.bbc.co.uk íàâåðõ | 
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The UK and Greece are to hold talks on the Parthenon sculptures January 23rd, 2004 The UK and Greece are to hold talks on the Parthenon sculptures, hundreds of which were cut from the temple by Lord Elgin and sold to the British Museum.
"The best way of taking this forward is by way of discussions between the two cultural ministers," Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.
He spoke after he and Tony Blair discussed the issue with Greek foreign minister George Papandreou in London.
A new campaign began this month for the 2,500-year old sculptures to be united.
Reunification
"We have our views," said Mr Papandreou after Thursday's meeting. Greece has called for years for the reunification of the marble sculptures - some of the finest artworks ever produced.
In places the frieze which ran round the temple on the Acropolis of Athens depicts five, six and seven horsemen riding almost abreast, in a depth of carving which never exceeds two and a quarter inches (six centimetres).
Lord Elgin's agents stripped hundreds of sculptures from the Parthenon in 1801-2 and sold them to British Museum in 1816. Of the surviving items some 90 are in London and 97 in Athens - in many cases part of a figure is in London and part in Athens.
Mr Papandreou said the culture ministers would discuss the issue "soon".
A campaign group, Marbles Reunited, began a fresh campaign for the Marbles' return this month.
The Greek government is now offering to accept the London sculpures as a loan, sidestepping the issue of ownership, and combining them with those sculptures still in Greece in a specially built museum on the Acropolis.
The UK Government has always backed the British Museum, which inists that it is the best place for Lord Elgin's marbles, and that its Trustees have a duty to hold them so as to secure maximum public benefit.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.bbc.co.uk íàâåðõ | 
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New site of World War II with five million aerial Photos January 20th, 2004 LONDON, ENGLAND.- Today more than five million aerial photographs of World War II are being made public on the internet. The photographs were taken by the Royal Air Force and were used by Allied commanders for strategy. Among the events covered by the pictures are D-Day, the Holocaust, and the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck.
The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (TARA) at Keele University is creating the website. Allan Williams, project leader, stated, "These images allow us to see the real war at first hand - as if we are RAF pilots. I was really moved by the photographs of the Nazi concentration camps and the D-Day landings. It’s like a live action replay."
Some of the pictures have a 3-D quality. They were taken by high resolution cameras, and when viewed with a stereoscope the contours of terrain become more visible. It was a technique that helped create realistic 3-D models of the Normandy beaches ahead of the D-Day landings in June 1944.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.artdaily.com íàâåðõ | 
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Conversations with Kafka: Works by Jacob Porat January 20th, 2004 On view at the Embassy of Israel in Prague beginning this month are works Jacob Porat. The paintings of Jacob Porat converse with Kafka on the backdrop of Kafka’s home city – Prague - in a multi-layer “correspondence”. One layer is Porat’s paintings. The second consists of photographed sites in Prague. The third includes pen drawings made by Kafka, and the fourth depicts Kafkaesque situations taken from Kafka’s works. And the fifth layer is that of the viewer, who draws near the paintings to look and reveal the worlds hidden inside, one on top of the other, one coming out of the other.
The longer one looks at the paintings, the more details are discovered and layers excavated, the complexity of the worlds depicted proliferates and deepens. The viewers bring themselves to the paintings. However, the more versed they are in Porat’s artistic world, the more real their familiarity with Prague, and the more they feel at home in Kafka’s works, the more responsive they become to the paintings. They can then interpret them by peeling off layer after layer of the open meaning, of a symbol never fully construed.
Jacob Porat is distinguished by his search for different, various forms of expression. The exhibitions he has held throughout the years expose the constant and changing elements of his works in all possible aspects: techniques, compositions, and themes. Although evident in his work, his literary education does not make his paintings an illustration of literary writings. Rather, it serves as the driving force of the painting, an enabler of deeper expression and intricacy of the visual statement. Porat’s paintings have a life of their own, and these lives have been an integral part of his works since he has begun painting to date. His works in general, and “Conversations with Kafka” in particular, strike a correct balance between the “painting instinct”, which is based on intuition and talent and the intellect that is aware of itself and of the literary interpretation of themes.
Porat’s continuous pursuit is associated with his unsteady, difficult and diverse childhood, his search for Jewish and Israeli identity, his assimilation of past events and family history, as well as of Israeli present and society and his place in them. His standing within several artistic branches – painting, literature, music, and photography – allows him to assemble the special of each, creating a unity of contradictions.
The Kafkaesque figure in Jacob Porat’s series of Kafka paintings stands opposite the closed gate, waiting for it to open. Made of ornate iron or arched stone at the entry to a house or wall, the gate is concrete, realistic, and traceable to specific buildings in Prague. The Kafkaesque figure is part of the gate, swallowed into it, protruding from it or entangled in its twists. However, it is also the metaphorical gate found inside any person as well as in one’s relations with other people and the world. This is a gate, which at the same time blocks the road and a personal gate designated only for the person standing opposite it.
The tall and thin Kafkaesque figure is placed in a huge church space, hovering against colorful vitrage, always conflicting with authority: the Father-God. Yet another extension of the figure is positioned in the space inside a fence-cage, like a culprit in court. This is a conflict between Judaism and Christianity, between man and superior forces that turn a deaf ear, between man and the law enforcing authorities. This conflict is open to additional conflicts and interpretations, which the paintings offer their viewers.
The paintings are a splendid aesthetic expression of a world of nightmares, of frightful dreams becoming concrete, of the encounter between madness and nightmare and the logical, sane, and clear. They manifest art’s exclusive ability to unify conflicts and contradictions, to express lunacy by aesthetic means, and to concurrently depict contradictory situations: terror and beauty, colorful loneliness, styled nightmare, terrestrial hovering, and life growing out of death.
This exhibition is yet another brick in the glorious buildings of paintings inspired by literature and juxtaposing these two realms of art. It is an interpretive, principle confrontation between the worlds of literature and painting, and between the worlds of Kafka and Jacob Porat. However, more than anything else, it is a confrontation with the world of the readers-viewers – their way of deciphering Kafka's works on the background of Prague and their comprehension of Kafka paintings by Jacob Porat.
2004-01-19 until 2004-02-25
Embassy of Israel
Prague, , CZ Czech Republic
Èñòî÷íèê: www.absolutearts.com íàâåðõ | 
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Picasso in Running for Most Expensive Painting
January 16th, 2004 Special Services from The Guardian Unlimited:
Pablo Picasso´s Boy with a Pipe, painted in 1905 when he was 24, could become the world´s most expensive painting at an auction at Sotheby´s in New York.
The painting is estimated to sell for $70m (£38m) at the auction in May, but could easily outstrip Van Gogh´s portrait of Dr Gachet, which had a before-commission price tag of $75m in 1990.
Sotheby´s estimates that the sale, which includes works by Manet, Degas, Monet and Sargent, could bring $140m to $190m. But "Boy With a Pipe" is the undisputed star of the collection.
The painting depicts an adolescent boy, known as "p´tit Louis," who hung around the artist´s studio, holding a pipe in his left hand with a garland of roses on his head. In the background are two large bouquets.
"Historians believe the garland of roses were added towards the end of the painting," said David Norman, co-director of Sotheby´s Impressionist and modern department worldwide. "That touch transformed the boy from a moody adolescent in blue overalls to a bizarre, deity-like figure."
The collection was formed over two generations by Payne and Helen Hay Whitney, heirs to a fortune made from oil, tobacco and property - and then by their son, John Hay Whitney, the former US ambassador to Britain, and his wife Betsey.
During their 46-year marriage, the couple amassed one of the world´s most important art collections, rivalled only by those of Stavros Niarchos, the Greek shipping magnate.
The Whitneys were generous to museums. When Betsey Whitney died, she left more than $300m worth of art by masters like Picasso, van Gogh, Matisse and Monet to National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Yale Art Gallery in New Haven and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.
They formed their collection with the advice of John Rewald, the curator, teacher and expert on Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art who died in 1994, and John Richardson, the Picasso biographer.
The 44 Whitney paintings will go on view at Sotheby´s from April 28 to May 5. Proceeds of the sale will benefit the Greentree Foundation, established by the Whitneys to promote international cooperation.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.artdaily.com íàâåðõ | 
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Fernand Khnopff: Work Known and Unknown January 16th, 2004 The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium organized this important retrospective of the oeuvre of Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921), a major artist and the leader of the Belgian Symbolist movement. This event will give the opportunity to show, for the very first time, several never before exhibited and thoroughly unknown works.
Fernand Khnopff began his career when Realism was the most advanced style in Belgium, and he always maintained a commitment to verisimilitude in the details of his works. However, Realism was not enough for him: he insisted that art must suggest the essential mystery behind the visible facts and facades. It was as a painter of symbols and allegories that Khnopff became famous. One of his most baffling allegories is The Caresses, or The Sphinx (1896), a revision of the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx. The show moves from Brussels to Montreal were visitors can enjoy Knopff’s works from June 2 to September 26, 2004.
2004-01-16 until 2004-05-09
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
Èñòî÷íèê: www.absolutearts.com íàâåðõ | 
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Bono helps charity keep the wolf from the door
January 14th, 2004 When not busy singing and saving the world, U2's lead singer Bono is a bit of an artist. A limited edition set of lithographs of his illustrations for Peter and the Wolf goes on sale today at the London Art Fair, in aid of the Irish Hospice Foundation which cared for the singer's father until his death three years ago.
Bono said of his own work last year when his first solo art exhibition opened in New York: "I love art too much to call these anything other than marks on paper."
"When I saw them I was just blown away, I thought they were sensational," gallery owner Cynthia Corbett, who is exhibiting the works, said last night.
His original illustrations were auctioned in New York, but an edition of 200 lithographs is now being released - each at an undisclosed four-figure sum. The watercolour illustrations were made with the help of his daughters, Jordan and Eve, for a book accompanying a new version of Prokofiev's orchestral composition for children.
The new arrangement is by an old friend of Bono's, Maurice Seezer, and fellow Irish musician and painter, Gavin Friday - veteran of Dublin band The Virgin Prunes, which didn't quite achieve the worldwide multimillion sales of U2.
Ms Corbett has had to borrow a signed set of the lithographs from a client to put on display: Bono has been so busy he hasn't had time to sign all the prints yet.
Maev Kennedy
Èñòî÷íèê: www.guardian.co.uk/arts íàâåðõ | 
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Deichtorhallen Hamburg Presents Corpus Christi
January 13th, 2004 HAMBURG, GERMANY.- From the Christmas season till Easter Monday the International House of Photography at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg presents photographic representations of Christ of three centuries in the exhibition Corpus Christi. Lenders like the Getty Museum and Sir Elton John lent appr. Approx. 150 works by 81 artists, featuring Fred Holland Day, Man Ray, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano.
That Christianity was a major influence and catalyst in the development of Western art is a widely acknowledged fact, particularly in the fields of painting and sculpture. But the more recent art of photography has also shown considerable interest in religion and, although inevitably influenced by other art forms, it has nevertheless offered its own thoroughly original interpretations of images relating the life of Jesus and events of the New Testament. This exibition is conceived and prepared by the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. It is one of the first exhibitions to be exclusively devoted to this subject.
Critical analysis with the myth of Christ covers a wide framework: The photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron, Anne Brigman, Andres Serrano and Rauf Mamedov have a clearly aesthetic expression. The works of Fred Holland Day and Oscar Gustav Rejlander have completely religious demands. Artists like John Heartfield, W. Eugene Smith and Manuel Alvarez Bravo pursue socio-political intentions with their photographs. In contemporary photography Christian symbolism is frequently used satirically and subversively or even for commercial purposes which contributes to a wide extent to the explosiveness of the exhibition.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.artdaily.com íàâåðõ | 
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One of Britain's leading painters Sir Kyffin Williams has accused modern artists January 13th, 2004 At the opening of a gallery on his native Anglesey, 85-year-old Sir Kyffin, a member of the Royal Academy, said much of modern art was "totally unlikeable" and labelled teaching in art colleges "disgraceful."
Speaking at the opening of the Oriel Gwyngyll gallery in Llanfairpwll, north Wales, on Monday night, he blamed the art establishment, including the arts councils and competitions like the Turner Prize and the Welsh-funded Artes Mundi.
"Nobody ever likes the work in the Turner Prize," he said.
"Conceptual installation art is worthless and people don't want it.
"Galleries are desperately trying to find young artists who can draw - even in places like Cardiff and London."
Sir Kyffin, who draws much of the inspiration for his work from the scenery of north Wales, said many modern artists were more interested in fame and publicity than art itself.
"There is very little love in art in art today...very little humanity in the work people do," he said.
"So much modern work is totally, totally unlikeable."
The Turner Prize stirs an annual debate about the merits of often modern art. It was won last year by the pottery artist Grayson Perry, a transvestite who creates vases depicting subjects like death and child abuse.
Also nominated last year were controversial brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, whose work included Sex, a sculpture depicting bodies being picked at by maggots. Another, Death, was a bronze sculpture of a pair of blow-up dolls engaged in a sex act on a lilo.
Sir Kyffin's attack echoes the comments about the previous year's Turner by the Pontypridd MP and Transport Minister Kim Howells, who described the entries as "cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit".
Sir Kyffin spoke as he promoted a national drawing competition for Wales which will be hosted in Llanfairpwll in July.
Sir Kyffin is donating £1,500 for the main prize and will act as the official adjudicator.
"We decided on drawing because it has been so neglected lately," he explained.
"I don't know what we will get but I'm hoping it will encourage people to draw.
"In art college it is hardly taught - I teach it in primary schools in Gwynedd.
"What has been taught in art colleges has been disgraceful over the last 50 years."
"People in Wales have never been terribly interested in art but now they seem to want pictures more than ever.
"They want them because they like something they know - something that is Welsh like the sheepdog and the Welsh like pictures of Wales because it gives them a feeling of warmth."
The Oriel Gwyngyll gallery has been opened by local artist and photographer Edward Pari-Jones and his wife Jackie.
The gallery displays his work and some reproductions of Sir Kyffin's work and will help stage the stage the competition in the summer.
The competition is open to all age groups from professional and amateur artists through to secondary and primary school pupils throughout Wales.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.bbc.co.uk íàâåðõ | 
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First Comprehensive Work On Alexander Proctor January 10th, 2004 LONDON, ENGLAND.- The first comprehensive monographic work ever published on one of America’s best-known sculptors, Alexander Proctor (1860–1950) , has been published by Third Millennium Publishing of Great Britain in association with the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, USA.
The author, Professor Peter Hassrick, uncovers the full story of Proctor’s adventure in art over a period of nearly seventy years. Heavily illustrated in colour and duotone, the 256 page hardback book features the full range of Proctor’s oeuvre, including monumental and studio sculpture, plaster and clay maquettes, and drawings. A series of seven essays covers the key influences and major achievements of his career, with over 50 illustrations depicting the artist’s most important commissions.These include the Buffalo Head for the White House State Dining Room (1909) and the massive Mustangs at the University of Texas (1948), as well as smaller studio pieces such as his Indian Warrior (1900–02), which is shown on the cover of the book, and Panther (1922–23). The volume also features rare archival and studio images and personal recollections of the artist’s son and grandson.
As well as having a contagious sense of joy and humour, Proctor embraced adventure, both physical – he killed his first bear at the age of sixteen – and intellectual – he received the coveted Rinehart Scholarship in 1898, which funded three highly influential years of study in Paris. He also won many awards during his lifetime, including the Prix de Rome in 1898 and a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition. He was appointed Resident Sculptor at the American Academy in Rome in 1925. Regarded as America’s most prolific sculptor of outdoor monuments during the first half of the 20th century, examples of his work can be found in many major American cities and universities, from New York and Washington, D.C., to Chicago, Dallas, Denver, San Francisco, and Portland.
The publication of Wildlife and Western Heroes, accompanies a major traveling exhibition, which opened at the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth in October.
Professor Hassrick, is the founding director emeritus of the Charles M. Russell Center at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA. He was also founding director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, director for twenty years of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, and Curator of Collections at the Amon Carter Museum.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.artdaily.com íàâåðõ | 
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London's Tate Britain gallery is hoping to borrow a painting by Francis Bacon from Tehran Museum January 10th, 2004 London's Tate Britain gallery is hoping to borrow a painting by Francis Bacon from Tehran Museum, Iran, which has lain in storage for almost 25 years.
Bacon's triptych Two Figures Lying on a Bed with Attendants is seen one of the artist's major works.
It was bought by the last Shah of Iran and was destined to be exhibited in his wife's museum in the city.
But the 1979 Iranian revolution resulted in the painting being put into storage as it was deemed indecent.
A spokeswoman for the Tate said: "We have requested the loan of the work. But we have yet to receive confirmation.
"The museum director is very keen to show the work. It is a major work by Francis Bacon and it has not been shown for more than two decades.
"It is such a key painting and it should be shown at the home of British art."
The request is going through official channels and is expected to take a month.
Two years ago Tate Britain's director Stephen Deuchar visited the modern art museum in Tehran and returned last month for talks with its director, Dr Sami Azar.
He was shown the Bacon painting during the visit.
"I thought it would be rather great to see it in this country in the context of some other Bacons," he told the Independent newspaper. Èñòî÷íèê: www.bbc.co.uk íàâåðõ | 
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1.3 Million Visitors to Van Gogh Museum January 7th, 2004 AMSTERDAM.- Van Gogh Museum closes Van Gogh’s 150th anniversary year successfully with 1.3 million visitors A total of 1,341,586 visitors came to the Van Gogh Museum in 2003, the year that marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vincent van Gogh. This is second only to the record number that visited the Van Gogh Museum in 2002 when the museum presented the Van Gogh & Gauguin exhibition.
The large number of visitors over the past twelve months is due in part to the enormous interest generated by the two anniversary exhibitions Vincent’s choice (14 February to 15 June 2003) and Gogh Modern (27 June to 12 October 2003). Around 900,000 people visited these exhibitions.
On Sunday, 30 March 2003, the 150th anniversary of Van Gogh’s birth, some 7,000 people visited the Van Gogh Museum. To mark the occasion the museum was open free of charge until 9.00 pm.
About 17,000 people took advantage of the offer that ran throughout 2003 of free entry - with an accompanying guest - to the Van Gogh Museum on their birthday.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.artdaily.com íàâåðõ | 
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Art Miami 2004 Opens at Miami Convention Center January 7th, 2004 MIAMI, FLORIDA.- Arts aficionados, collectors and visitors to Art Miami will find themselves in new territory when they visit the long-running international art exposition at the Miami Beach Convention Center, Wednesday – Sunday, January 7 through 11, 2004. In an effort to more sharply define the show, which returns to Miami for the 14th consecutive year, director Ilana Vardy has trimmed, upgraded and improved, designing an art fair that better shapes the show’s future direction.
"We’ve made some very positive changes to the show," offers Vardy, "We’ve altered the floor plan to create more spacious hallways, re-examined our programming to include more projects and, significantly, set stricter criteria for participants."
A leaner show, scaled back to 120 participating galleries from Europe, Asia and the Americas, Art Miami will still contain the elements that have made it one of the most commercially successful fairs on the international circuit. Currents, the critically successful section of the show that offers up the best of the cutting edge with young international exhibitors will return, this time on Art Miami’s main floor. Once again, a large contingent of Spanish and Latin American galleries will participate, helping to forge Art Miami’s reputation as the best venue for Latin American art outside of Latin America. This year, with the help of a Selection Committee of committed Art Miami exhibitors, the show will feature more photography, higher quality three-dimensional works, a wider variety of Project Spaces, and top quality contemporary and modern work. One of the most compelling projects will be presented by COFA/claire oliver fine art (New York). Entitled Oasis, it’s part of the ongoing Islamic Project, started in 1996 by AES+F, a Russian Jewish collective from Moscow that has created a running commentary on the Western world’s fear-based reactions to Islam. Among their most recognizable efforts, manipulated photographs of symbols of Islam within Western culture include a veiled Statue of Liberty. Oasis takes the form of a gigantic, lushly carpeted Bedouin tent featuring handmade carpets stitched from cotton fabric with AES’s Islamic images. This centrally located center for meditation and relaxation will double as the Art Miami lounge.
"Art Miami has always been a great place to discover new talent -- an exciting environment for young galleries to get their first taste of the international art fair experience among well-known dealers with a regular client base," Vardy stated. "It seems that we are really solidifying our niche this year. "
Èñòî÷íèê: www.artdaily.com íàâåðõ | 
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The Tate galleries talks about selling artworks
January 7th, 2004 The Tate galleries are in talks over a plan to sell some of its artworks to help it improve its collection.
Works by living artists, such as David Hockney, could be sold to allow the Tate to buy better or more appropriate items by the same person.
Despite Hockney's stature, the most recent of his pieces in the Tate's collection dates back to 1977.
Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota said there was not enough money to buy works which were offered to the institution.
He told The Art Newspaper: "Sometimes, we find artists are not represented by the best examples of their work, or perhaps we have two or three pieces which we are unlikely to show together because there are close in type."
The idea is still at an early stage, and Tate trustees have made no decision on whether to go ahead with it.
But the institution would only consider selling works by living artists and with their permission.
National museums are allowed to dispose of works if an item is "unsuitable for retention", which the Tate feels would allow it to sell off works to upgrade its collection.
"There would be no question of selling a Turner to by a Hirst," Sir Nicholas added.
The Tate's collection is shared between its two galleries in London, Tate Britain and Tate Modern, as well as galleries in Liverpool and St Ives, Cornwall.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.bbc.co.uk íàâåðõ | 
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Photographer Denise Loeb-Colomb, 101, Dies
January 5th, 2004 PARIS, FRANCE.- Photographer Denise Loeb-Colomb, 101, died. In 1991 she donated her collection to the French state. She was one of the best photographers of the second half of the 20th century. She made portraits of Picasso, Balthus, Antonin Artaud, Alberto Giacommetti, Nicolas de Staël, Alexander Calder, Le Corbusier and Marc Chagall, among others.
She was born in Paris on April 1, 2002 and got into photography by accident while traveling to Saigon. “I used to be very independent,” she once said, “but now I just leave things to others. I listen to music—Bach’s cello suites. I have played them so many times.”
Denise Colomb began playing the cello when she was 7. She studied at the conservatory but got stage fright when she had to play in front of an audience for her graduation recital. Unable to play, she gave up the cello.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.artdaily.com íàâåðõ | 
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Prado Museum Closes 2003 with 2.3 Million Visitors
January 4th, 2004 MADRID, SPAIN.- The Museo del Prado increased its visitors in 2003 in reference to 2002. The museum had 688,137 more visitors in 2003. The total amount of visitors for 2003 was 2,318,515, around 42% higher that the previous year. This important increase is due to three important exhibitions that took place in 2003: Vermeer, Titian and Manet. This amount of visitors had not been reached since the exhibition dedicated to Velázquez in 1990. The Vermeer exhibition reached 254,570 visitors between February 19 and May 18. The Titian exhibition reached 361,522 between June 10 and September 7. The Manet exhibition has had 286,480 up until December 31. Due to the success of the exhibition, the institutions that loaned the works for the Manet exhibition have agreed to extend the loans until February 8. The months when the museum had a greatest amount of visitors were April, with 226,810; Marzo, 226,713; August, with 225,537; November, with 225,220; and May with 200,776.
Èñòî÷íèê: www.artdaily.com íàâåðõ | 
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