Architecture

Sushma Bahl, International Cultural Advisor, Writes ‘5000 Years of Indian Art’

A comprehensive rendition of the living arts of India, from pre-historic to contemporary times, is featured in 5000 Years of Indian Art, by Sushma K Bahl. The 240 page richly-illustrated volume, published by Roli Books, traces an ancient civilization, entwined in the history, religion and philosophy of the un-fragmented subcontinent of yore. The narrative weaves together the gamut of Indian creativity, a continuum spread over the millennia, its varied genres including frescos of the earliest primitive cave markings to stones of ancient art in the Vedic and Buddhist traditions and temples. Mughal miniatures, colonial and modern Indian art, sculpture, photography, and finally, crafted artifacts, media-inspired work, and popular installations traverse all of the eras, regions, religions, dynasties, mediums and genres, rather than, as the author puts it, ‘formally demarcating historical periods.’

Left: Artist Unknown, Bodhisattva Padmapani, cave painting with natural pigments (ca. 5th c.). In situ, Cave 1 at Ajanta, Maharashtra, India. artes fine arts magazineMore

Correr Museum, Venice, Celebrates Austrian Symbolism

It has taken over a century for Gustav Klimt to gloriously return to Venice. His first exhibition at the Biennale dates back to 1910, and the show was a triumph: his extravagant, yet delicate, paintings had been placed right opposite Renoir’s, as to emphasize the striking difference between these two masters and the gap that diveded their conception of beauty and visual arts.

Left: Gustav Klimt, Judith I (1901). Coll: Ca’ Pesaro National Gallery of Modern Art, Venice artes fine arts magazine More

Santa Barbara Museum of Art Expands Collection of Early Roman Sculpture

I love museums on the move, particularly those that take their mission to educate, seriously. Located in a beautifully-renovated former post office, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (left) boasts an international collection deserving of repeated accolades. With the earliest renovation of the original structure by architect David Adler in 1939, and with several more expansions and improvements to the space over several decades, the newly renovated Park Wing Entrance and Luria Activities Center opened in June, 2006. The institution is now celebrating its 70th anniversary year with the addition of the newly-installed Lansdowne Dionysus in its entrance courtyard. Drawn from the collection of Wright Ludington, a life-long patron of the museum, the piece serves as an elegant reminder that the museum holds the second-largest collection of Greco-Roman sculpture in California, only to be outdone by the mighty museum atop a Los Angeles hill—the Getty. artes fine arts magazineMore

Traveling Critic, Linda Y. Peng, Tracks a Late Renaissance Master Painter

www.artesmagazine.com — Venice's Grand Canal on a hazy summer morning. Photo: Peter Deilmann/AP

A soft grey, gossamer haze clung to the sky over the lagoon, threatening drizzle, on my first morning in Venice. No matter. I stepped onto the fondamenta of the canal abutting the locanda’s facade, the slightly damp stones seemingly having succumbed to the humid air. In the 1850’s, John Ruskin wrote about these stones, quarried and shipped for centuries from the former Venetian territories of Istria, now decorating the city’s grand palaces and churches and paving the streets and campos, atop what once were island marshes. artes fine arts magazineMore

A Quiet Stroll through Palm Beach International Fine Art Fair*

Once a year, preferably in the heart of winter, I leave Connecticut for Florida, where 360-degree vistas of water and warm weather renew the eternal sunshine of my mind. Such was the case last week, when I headed out of New York’s Westchester County Airport for a direct flight to Palm Beach. This wonderfully efficient mode of transport is a mere thirty minutes drive from my house, with non-stop service to the very manageable West Palm Beach airport. This allows me to avoid the hassles of expensive overnight parking and airports crowded with the hustle of international travelers—all careening for attention—in languages not my own. But I understand that this service has a short shelf-life; the last direct flights will end in August, for lack of consumer demand. Such was noted all too well on my own flight down, which held only eight passengers, all of us asked to sit in first class, presumably so that the flight attendants had fewer steps to walk in order to serve us our very non-first class non-alcoholic beverage and potato chip dinner. artes fine arts magazineMore

Delhi Photographer Captures the Myriad Faces and Moods of India

The idea of contemporary India, and a quintessential one at that—a conglomerate of many Indias, with its fluid social fabric and multitudes of people—is the paradox that confronts the photo-artist, JJ Valaya, an accomplished designer and pioneering fashion guru. Through his viewfinder, Valaya captures the fascinating multiplicity of a burgeoning city where he has lived and worked for decades, tantalizing us with loving and nostalgic glimpses of this place he knows so well: glamour and grime; sophisticated and commonplace; classical and popular; rich and poor; old and new—whether spontaneous or carefully-planned—all are framed by the photographer’s eye in different parts of Delhi, India’s capital city. artes fine arts magazineMore

Dutch and Flemish Masterworks on Display at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts

She was born in Belgium, he in the Netherlands; they both live in the United States. Between them they’ve assembled the finest private collection of Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings in the world. Unlikely though it might seem, Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection, currently on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, is the first time that the van Otterloos have seen their collection displayed in its entirety.

(Left) [IMAGE 1] Godfried Schalcken, Young Girl Eating Sweets (detail), 1680-85, oil/panel, 73 x 61″. Collection Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo. Image courtesy Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts fine arts magazineMore

Harvard University’s Sackler Museum Exhibition Explores Renaissance Art & Science Connection

“Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence.” ~Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)

The sixteenth century marked the dawn of a new age of inquiry, understood by many as the earliest beginnings of the modern age. Religious fervor, superstition and broadly-held, ancient views of the structure of the Universe, planet Earth and the natural order of all life forms were slowly giving way to rational examination and the application of objective observation to everyday phenomena. Scientific study, a novel and often theologically dangerous pursuit, had finally begun to attract the attention of a select few. With the help of the newly-invented moveable print, paper production (a concept brought west from China, via the Silk Road), the application of mass-produced texts and illustrations spawned a widening community of intellectuals; and with them, a body of knowledge that would soon comprise a Northern European Renaissance in the arts and sciences. These analytical trends would form a systematic model for understanding the mysteries of nature that persists to the present day.

Above: Hendrick Goltzius, The Great Hercules, 1589. See End Note #1, below. artes fine arts magazineMore

Philadelphia Museum of Art with Neo-Modern Vision of Multi-Faceted Architect

Image 7 Katya — The 'Z'-Chair, a Zaha Hadid design, on view at PMA

On view through spring, 2012, the Philadelphia Museum of Art features a unique exhibition, Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion. This show includes furniture and design objects in a space entirely transformed by the prominent female architect. The fluid, site-specific installation is the first of its kind in the United States, assembled by a team of designers from Hadid Architects. The show reflects Hadid’s seamless work methods, as well as her technological breakthroughs in architecture and design. artes fine arts magazineMore

Venice Biennale 2011 Showcases Global Sampling of Contemporary Art

Venice Biennale artes fine arts magazine — Urs Fischer, Statue of Rudolf Stingel (2011). Part of 3-sculpture, 'Untitled' series

The tone of the 2011 Venice Biennale seems different from Biennales past. The political bludgeoning of the viewer is milder this year, and the curatorial mystification less extreme. A lot of thinking out loud is in evidence instead, as if the Biennale were puzzling over the proposition of a world exposition of contemporary art in the year 2011 and forcing visitors to ponder their role in attending one.

The three sculptures in Urs Fischer’s Untitled (2011) are not reassuring on this score. Soaring dozens of meters into the air is a full-size wax replica of Giambologna’s, Rape of the Sabine Women (1583), (below). A male waxwork in sport jacket and glasses regards the statue from across the gallery, and to the side is an empty office chair—also in wax—in which the man (or perhaps Fischer) might work when he is not visiting art fairs. The artwork, viewer, and chair are not just uncannily convincing replicas; they are candles. Each has a wick that was lit during the opening of the Biennale, and ever since, the three have been dripping, oozing, sagging, and dropping appendages. By and by, artwork, viewer, and “workaday world” will end up ignominious puddles on the Arsenale floor, consumed by time, necessity, and the perversity of Biennales. fine arts magazineMore