Wherefore art …

Ok, so having two blogs doesnt work for me!   So if you’ve found this because you’re interested in art, please link over to my primary blog at   janessmartartblog-blogspot-com

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ

- People who live in NJ are quite happy that non-New Jerseyites think of the state as one great big border-to-border industrial eyesore. In fact, it’s not for nothing that NJ is the called Garden State, and there’s something kinda special about being in on a best-kept secret! 

NJ is a grand place for art-lovers, because of the proximity of the world-class museums in Manhattan and Philadelphia, as well as exceptional smaller museums like that at Princeton University, and the Zimmerli at Rutgers.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, Goya

This fall, the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick is showing Dark Dreams: The Prints of Francisco Goya, an exhibition of 100 prints demonstrating Goya’s technical and creative achievements as a printmaker. The exhibition will present two complete suites of prints by Goya (1746-1828), Los Caprichos and Los Disparates. In addition, a special display of 12 works by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Enrique Chagoya (born 1953) and Yinka Shonibare MBE (born 1962) demonstrates the continuing impact of Goya’s imagery and imagination on successive generations of artists.

The exhibition features Goya’s first major series of etchings, Los Caprichos (1799), comprising eighty works treating subjects ranging from witches and goblins to critical commentary on the contemporary state of education, religion, and relations between different social classes of that time. Later, Goya revisited the monstrous themes of Los Caprichos in the late etchings he referred to as Los Disparates (“Follies”), which he created between 1816 and 1824. The exhibition also includes Bullfight in a Divided Ring (1825), from the series of The Bulls of Bordeaux, a late work demonstrating Goya’s success with the new medium of lithography. The rare first-edition Goya prints in the exhibition are generously lent by the Arthur Ross Foundation, New York.

The exhibition opened on September 2 and will continue through December 14, ‘08.  Apparently anyone and everyone is invited to a public celebration at the museum next Tuesday, September 16, from 5 to 7pm.  See you there?

Get Thee to the Getty

LOS ANGELES – To celebrate Italian Language Week, the J. Paul Getty Museum is offering a special one-hour overview — en italiano — of the current exhibition: Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture.

 

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) is considered the greatest Baroque sculptor, and his unparalleled talent as a portrait sculptor transformed the practice and earned him the patronage of the Catholic Church and nobility in 17th- century Rome. Co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa , Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture is the first major exhibition of Bernini’s work in North America and the first ever comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s portrait busts.

 

On view at the Getty Center through October 26, 2008 , the special exhibition also includes Bernini’s portrait drawings, as well as portrait busts by other important sculptors in 17th-century Rome such as Francesco Mochi, François Duquesnoy, Giuliano Finelli, and Alessandro Algardi. If you’ve been to Rome, you know Bernini. If you’ve listened to the Jane’s Smart Art audio guide to St. Peter’s Basilica, you’re also familiar with the work of Mochi, Duquesnoy, and Algardi.

 

As a complement to the Baroque portraiture exhibit, the Getty Center has mounted another temporary exhibit at , Faces of Power and Piety: Medieval Portraiture — also through October 26, 2008.

The goal of medieval portraiture was to present a subject not at a particular moment in time, but as the person wished to be remembered through the ages. “While modern portraiture strives to capture the accurate likeness of a specific person, medieval portraiture was primarily valued for its ability to express an individual’s social status, religious convictions, or political position,” says Elizabeth Morrison, curator of manuscripts, J. Paul Getty Museum.

Art Daily provides a schedule of related lectures, gallery talks, & concerts in Sept and Oct.

New operating hours and parking fees …

Henceforth, the Getty Center will close at 5:30 pm (a half hour earlier than previously) on Sundays and Tuesday through Friday. Saturdays it will remain open until 9pm. The Getty Center is closed on Mondays. Ticketed events and performances will still be presented on Friday evenings, but the galleries will not be open to the general public. Getty Villa hours will remain unchanged.

 

Admission to both Museums remains free.

 

On Sept. 9th, parking fees at both the Getty Center and the Getty Villa increased from $8 to $10.

 

Grand Canal Gets Its 4th Bridge

VENICE - Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s new Venetian bridge has been taking a beating from the critics. The first bridge constructed in Venice in 125 years, it connects the train station to the vehicle-open area of Piazzale Roma. It is definitely of a style that breaks with the traditional architecture of the city. Criticism focusing largely on its high cost has caused the local government to make the decision not to officially inaugurate it on September 18 as planned.

An exquisitely historic thoroughfare, the the Grand Canal is lined with ancient palaces. Among them are the Ca’ Rezzonico, Ca’ d’Oro, Ca’ Foscari, Palazzo Barbarigo and the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, which houses the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The churches along the canal include the basilica of Santa Maria della Salute. Centuries-old tradition such as the Historical Regatta are perpetuated every year along the Canal.

The famous stone Rialto Bridge that stands today was built in 1591, but was preceded by, first, a pontoon bridge erected in 1181, and then a timber bridge built in 1255. For centuries this was the only bridge crossing over the Grand Canal. In the 19th century two more bridges, the Ponte degli Scalzi and the Ponte dell’Accademia were built. There’s a nice little history of the Rialto Bridge on Wikipedia.

During the long period of construction, the bridge project went though numerous structural changes because of the mechanical instability of the structure, and the excessive weight of the bridge which would cause the bank of the canal to fail. Over 10 years the project was inspected by more than 8 different consultants as costs grew to more than three times the original projections.

Santiago Calatrava Valls (b 1951) is an internationally recognized, award-winning Spanish architect, sculptor and structural engineer. His early career was dedicated largely to bridges and train stations, and his style has been heralded as bridging the division between structural engineering and architecture. Calatrava is currently designing the future train station – World Trade Center Transportation Hub – at Ground Zero in New York City. He has also designed three bridges that will eventually span the Trinity River in Dallas. Construction of the first bridge, named after donor Margaret Hunt Hill, has been repeatedly delayed due to – once again — high costs. If and when completed, Dallas will join the Dutch county of Haarlemmermeer in having three Calatrava bridges.

And speaking of Spaniards …

Zaragoza  -  Two days ago an exhibition “El Greco. Toledo 1900″ opened in the recently renovated Paraninfo Building of the University of Zaragoza  until November 30. 

The exhibition of 27 canvases produced by El Greco and his workshop, is a gathering of works which have hung in different public and private collections in the city of Toledo. Among the canvases is a group of portraits of the Covarrubias brothers, sons of the architect who designed the Cathedral in Toledo.

  

Admission to the exhibit is free.  The open hours are Monday through Saturday 10am – 2pm and 5pm – 9pm (only 5pm – 9pm on Fri Sept 19); Sunday and holidays from 10am to 2pm.

 

 

 From the Art Daily Newsletter:  “El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the centre of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before travelling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577 he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best known paintings.

 

“El Greco’s dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting. ”

Hello art-loving travelers of the world!

 

I’m planning on getting some serious vicarious thrills out of my new blog!

 If you read my profile you know that I publish audio art guides. Because of that, I’m plugged into a lot of art-related news sources.  I’ve learned to scan these super-quickly — otherwise I get sucked into daydreaming about traveling hither and yon to experience all the great art the world has to offer! 

 

 This blog will give me an excuse to pause in my scanning when something grabs my interest and pass it along to traveling art-lovers who might be in the enviable position to actually hie themselves hither!  I’ll also pass on personal art experiences and other newsy items that I think other traveling art-afficionados might be interested in too.

 

 Istanbul

 Istanbul’s Sakip Sabanci Museum  will host a huge modern art exhibition of 270 works by the late Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali, from September 19 until January 19.

 

 With 33 oil paintings, 113 sketches and 123 graphics, it  will be the largest ever mounted by the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation outside the artist’s Catalan hometown of Figueres.

 

 In 2005 and 2006 a major exhibition of works by another Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso, broke all records for a Turkish gallery, attracting a quarter of a million art lovers, so this show opens with high expectations for another blockbuster. 

 

 While you’re there be sure to check out the Museum’s permanent collection, which includes early Turkish painting as well as the works of foreign artists who worked in Istanbul during the later years of the Ottoman Empire; 500 years of the art of Ottoman calligraphy;  and exhibited in the garden of the Museum, archaeological stone pieces of the  Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman eras.