Fictional Character Moves into V&A Museum

Elmgreen & Dragset new brilliant installation, "Tomorrow" at the Victoria & Albert Museum, is a reconstruction of the apartment of a fictional character, Norman. Here we have Norman's home, we can walk around at this grand South Kensington apartment setting, and touch the items once belonging to the 75-year-old failed architect, and examine his unrealized models in his study. It is no surprise that the V&A directors extended an invitation to the artist duo after seeing their similar work Collectors at the 2009 Venice Biennale.  Watch this informative interview with the artists discussing their works, including this new installation.

http://vimeo.com/74735390

Milan's Secret Museum

Come and discover one of hidden gems in Milan: Poldi Pezzoli Museum. This extraordinary 'secret' museum is a few meters away from the famous Teatro alla Scala and full of Renaissance paintings and other treasures, all displayed in a beautiful domestic setting. The museum was the former home of the Milanese nobleman Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli, who died in 1879 and donated his home and collection for public use and benefit. Similar to the Frick Collection in New York, the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston, or the Musee Jacquemart-Andre in Paris. Here you will see masterpieces by Botticelli, Mantegna, Pollaiolo and sculptures, arms and armour, jewels, porcelains, lace, glass, furniture --- list goes on!

Amongst the highlights are the stunning "Madonna of the Book" by Florentine master Botticelli, "Imago Pietatis" by Giovanni Bellini, Piero della Francesca's monumental "St. Nicholas of Tolentino" and finally the symbol of the museum; "Portrait of a Woman" by Piero del Pollaiolo. The museum also holds interesting exhibitions with contemporary art works.

A recent show was "Symbols and geometry in Piero della Francesca: A reading of Chiara Dynys" which gave focus to Francesca's "St. Nicholas of Tolentino." This Renaissance work represents the saint in hieratic position that raises the index upwards in the direction of the stars and the sky which inspired the contemporary artist Chiara Dynys to create a dialogue between ancient and modern alchemy, particularly because Francesca was a mathematician as well as a painter. So next time in Milan, remember to make a stop at this little gem.

Sculptures behind the Renaissance

When you think of the great Renaissance works, one tends to focus on oil paintings and the painters. But without the sculptors who paved the way, we would have no Botticelli, Leonardo or Raphael. Renaissance really began in a few decades at the beginning of the 15th century in Florence, and a superb exhibition "The Springtime of the Renaissance" at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence maps out this artistic revolution and brings together a treasure-studded retrospective of sculpture through Western art's most important era. Speaking of the exhibition, curator Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi says "the exhibition aims to show that the origin of this revolution, which lasted two centuries, was sculpture."

Works by masters including Donatello and Masaccio, Brunelleschi and Paolo Uccello have been loaned for the unprecedented show, with works coming from collections including the Louvre in Paris, the Bargello Museum in Florence, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Bode-Museum in Berlin, the Metropolitan in New York and the National Gallery in Washington.

Amongst the loans is the Cortona sarcophagus, carved with Amazon warriors and plunging centaurs, that Brunelleschi is said to have walked all the way from Florence to see. The Bode-Museum lent a magnificent work by Donatello known as the "Madonna Pazzi" -- a marble statue used to create molds that were then used to cast copies in bronze. Speaking of this work, Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi says:

"These moulds in terracotta or stucco were not that costly so that any store or convent could afford the statues in Florence and elsewhere. This allowed the aesthetic revolution to spread, including outside of Italy."

Copies of the molds were made especially for the exhibition and put on display where visitors are encouraged to touch them.

Congratulations are due to the three institutions behind this show: the Louvre and the Bargello Museum, both of which have amazing permanent holdings, and Palazzo Strozzi. The exhibition ends in Florence on 18th of August, and will travel to the Louvre in September, on view until 6th of January 2014. So plenty of chance to see it.

Discovering British History: Tour of the Grand Houghton Hall

England has many historic houses and gardens that one can visit: from the grand and imposing to the small and quirky, you are spoilt for choice when planning a visit to one of these time capsules. This weekend we take a trip to Norfolk, to the Houghton Hall built by Great Britain's first prime minister Sir Robert Walpole. From the grand interiors designed by William Kent, to its surrounding 1,000 acres of parkland, Houghton remains a key building in the history of Palladian architecture in England. The current occupants, David Cholmondeley, 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley and his family, has opened part of their home to the public. Now with the current exhibition "Houghton Revisited" which brings together the art collection of Sir Robert Walpole that had been sold by later generations, the house attracts great number of visitors. We take a tour of the house, its surrounding woods, the beautifully manicured walled garden and let's not forget the contemporary sculpture park that has six great installations within the grounds, including James Turrell's "Skyscape" 2002 and 'Full Moon Circle, 2004 by Richard Long.

Vodou Inspired Art

Tired of seeing all similar art works, themes and names? If you are looking for a different flavor in the arts, why not stop by London’s Riflemaker for a very interesting show straight from Haiti!

There has been much focus on Haitian art recently, with Nottingham Contemporary staging the first comprehensive survey of Haitian art in the UK, and with Haitian vodou flags included in the group show curated by the celebrated American artist Cindy Sherman as part of the Venice Biennale this year. In the previous edition of the Venice Biennale, the Republic of Haiti made their first presentation with works from three artists who are part of Atis-Rezistans, the artistic collective from the Grand Rue neighborhood.

Haiti is especially known for the art of its urban and rural poor and the show at Riflemaker brings together sculptors from Haiti’s Grand Rue neighborhood of Port-au-Prince: Celeur Jean Herard and Andre Eugene, presented with Haitian Vodou flags by Silva Joseph and Edgard Jean Louis who are both Vodou priests. These flags are in fact ritual ‘drapos’ originally made for ceremonial use but now part of Haitian contemporary art. Their bright colors make a great contrast with the haunting works of the Grand Rue sculptors, which are made out of ready-made and recycled materials with references to Vadou that evoke a cyberpunk sci-fi vision.

“Kafou: Haiti, Art and Vodou” at Nottingham Contemporary that just closed in January of this year, was a big show including works from different media -- 200 works of 40 artists from the 1940s to the present day. It was able to display these artists’ vivid creativity, especially powerful in works inspired by Vodou - the religion which has been a central part of people's lives since Haiti became the world's first black republic in 1804. Speaking of the exhibition Alex Farquharson, director of Nottingham Contemporary says:

“Haitian art is often shown in a folk art context, which is unfair. If I didn't feel that this work stood up to a lot of work that I think is most interesting in contemporary art then I really wouldn't be showing it here.”

There is still time to go and see the show at Riflemaker, which closes end of the month, and make your own mind if you think Haitian art is as interesting!

Add Some Color to Your Summer with Tate Britain Shows

Tate Britain is showing three big artists this summer: Laurence Stephen Lowry, Gary Hume and Patrick Caulfield. Amongst this three, our favorite is the one of Caulfield! We felt that the Lowry show got a bit repetitive and Hume’s exhibition somehow fell short compared to the excitement we felt wondering through the Caulfield galleries.

The Hume and Caulfield shows are in fact paired together by the museum, as two British artists of different generations both engaging with the medium of paint and who are amazing colorists. Drawing inspiration from artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Donald Judd, Klimt and the great Old Master colorist Vermeer, Hume made his own name as one of the new generation of Young British Artists with his paintings of doors. For the exhibition entrance, he makes reference to these paintings and in fact made functioning doors for the first time!

This is a nice show bringing together Hume’s well-known works alongside recent paintings seen in the UK for the first time, all making up about 24 works charting Hume’s career since he exhibited his hospital doors paintings at the infamous “Freeze” exhibition organized by Damien Hirst in 1988.  Among the works been shown for the first time in the UK is a portrait of Angela Merkel titled “Anxiety and the Horse” 2011 that Hume completed in his home in upstate New York.

Patrick Caulfield is from an older generation than Hume. He first came to prominence in the 1960s and continued painting until his death in 2005. Similar to Hume, Caulfield’s career took off after an important exhibition. Caulfield’s was in 1964, the first of The New Generation exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, where David Hockney and Bridget Riley were also included.   He never painted figures, expect for his iconic 1963 portrait of Juan Gris, the Surrealist painter, which is included in the show.

Caulfield looked up to the previous generation, to artists like Fernand Leger, Edward Hopper, and Stuart Davis who used lot of color. Caulfield was interested in the way these artists used space and light to capture a place and time. Caulfield's skills as a colorist is evident as soon as one walks into the exhibition room: you get taken up by the bright lights, synthetic colors and shiny surfaces of the modern world. We see brilliant examples of Caulfield’s grand still lives and examinations of British culture. For example, he makes references to the 1970s custom of having continental breakfast or wallpaper in the living room with photographed European landscapes - or the late 90s when every bottle of lager had a wedge of lime. As the exhibition curator Clarrie Wallis says, “He is capturing the character of modern life.”

Caulfield was one of the most admired artists of his generation: figurative painters admired him for his sophisticated draftsmanship, abstract artists for his control and inventive use of color, minimalists for his austerity and conceptual artists for his intellectual rigor. If Tate Britain show is not enough dose of Caulfield for you, Alan Cristea has put on a show of the artist's silk screen prints and they are for sale too.

Old Masters Boom in Singapore

It seems like there is an Old Master paintings boom in Singapore! First it was the announcement that highlights from the world famous Princely Collection of Liechtenstein, normally housed in the Liechtenstein Palaces, are going on exhibit at the National Museum of Singapore, which opened on 26^th of June. Singapore is already the fourth stop for the collections' Asia tour, which have included Tokyo, Kochi and Kyoto. Further exhibitions in Beijing’s National Museum and the China Art Museum in Shanghai are planned to starting in the autumn.

Although these loan exhibitions are to promote the LGT Bank (owned by the princely House of Liechtenstein) in Asia, it certainly serves a great cultural purpose. The show is curated by Dr. Johann Kraftner, the family's art advisor and director of its two museums in Vienna, and brings together by masterworks including Raphael, Rubens, Canaletto and Pieter Brueghel the Younger.

The Canaletto on view was sold to the coll ection through the London-based Old Master dealer Derek Johns, who recently started a new venture in Singapore as well. Together with his Singapore-based partner Chng Hock Huat, and joining forces with Monaco-based dealer Marietta Vinci-Corsini (widow of the famous dealer Piero Corsini who passed away in 2001) Derek Johns has set up Emperor Fine Art in Singapore, giving the opportunity to see European Old Master paintings within the Asian region.

Johns and Corsini selected a group of paintings from their gallery stock to send to Singapore and held their first official week of events which cleverly corresponded with the opening of the Liechtenstein exhibition on 26th of June.

Add all this information on to the fact that just a month ago, the Singaporean government announced that the Pinacothèque de Paris is to bring Old Masters and Modern art in a pop-up space from September during the renovations to its main building in Paris. Owned and run by the Modigliani scholar Marc Restellini, the Pinacothèque first opened in 2007, and since 2011 has been displaying a collection of masterpieces from Van Dyck, Monet and Modigliani to Picasso and Pollock; all works on loan from private or public collections.

Singaporeans are getting a series of events and exhibitions highlighting Old Masters! Exhibitions are a great way to educate and expose audiences to such works, which is even better news for the dealers as they hope that after viewing and admiring the Old Master treasures on display, the Asian audience will be more inclined to start collecting them too.