MAXXI CollectionThe Large Glass | Rome | Italy

MAXXI CollectionThe Large Glasscurated by Alex Da Corte| Rome, Italy

Runs until 225/10/26

  The Museum Collection’s new display presents a new vision in which an artist or intellectual brings works of art, architecture, and photography together. This is an opportunity for appreciation and research to present the works of great masters and contemporary artists.

For The Large Glass, the curatorship is entrusted to Alex Da Corte, an American conceptual artist who experiments with different media, including painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and video. Exploring the various nuances of contemporary experience, Da Corte reads the MAXXI Collection in an organic sense: “Within the swelling curves of Zaha Hadid’s grand design, we see the classical elements of water, wind, fire, and earth. We see growth, decay, transformation, and nature’s seep through all things […] As the world churns and crusts in alchemy, we take our journey toward an inevitable invisible ether. We may move beyond, with nature as our guide, to a glass age. Here we may exist everywhere, evolving, while leaving no physical trace.”

Featuring works by: Francis Alÿs, Atelier Van Lieshout, AWP and Atelier Oslo, Massimo Bartolini, Alighiero Boetti, DEMOGO, Luigi Ghirri, Domenico Gnoli, Wolf Kahlen, Ugo La Pietra, Marisa Merz, Luigi Pellegrin, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Lauretta Vinciarelli, Kara Walker, Gal Weinstein.

MAXXI 

National Museum of 21st Century Arts | Via Guido Reni, 4 A| Rome| Italy
 

Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life @ TATE

Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life @ TATE

Runs until 1st of May 2023

 

Barbara Hepworth Disc with Strings (Moon) 1969  © Bowness

Barbara Hepworth is one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. She was at the forefront of international modern art, deeply spiritual, and passionately engaged with political and technological change. Born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, she moved to St Ives in 1939, where she lived and worked for the rest of her life. Her works reveal a singular vision of art and life, integrating her interests in music, dance, science, space exploration, politics, and religion, with personal events and experiences.

This exhibition presents almost five decades of her sculptures, paintings, drawings, prints and designs. Hepworth expanded the possibilities for sculpture and art’s purpose within modern society. Working in both abstraction and figuration, much of her art expresses our relationships with each other and our surroundings, and how art can reflect and alter our perceptions of the world. Hepworth considered St Ives her ‘spiritual home’. Her former residence and workspace in the town, Trewyn Studio, is now the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden. Hepworth’s works – from drawings to monuments – are treasured in public and private collections and civic spaces worldwide. Celebrating her extraordinary life and achievements, Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life is organised by The Hepworth Wakefield in collaboration with the National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh) and Tate St Ives.

Tate St Ives
Porthmeor Beach
St Ives
Cornwall TR26 1TG

Bosch - one another Renaissance >> Milano, Italy

Bosch - one another Renaissance >> Milano, Italy

Until 12 /03/2023

For the first time, the city of Milan, under the artistic direction of Palazzo Reale and Castello Sforzesco, pays tribute to the great Flemish genius and to his success in southern Europe, with a brand new exhibition project revolving around a fascinating thesis: Bosch is the emblem of an “alternative” Renaissance, which is far from the Renaissance governed by the myth of classicism and is evidence of the existence of a plurality of Renaissances, with its art centres scattered throughout Europe.

 

Jheronymus Bosch, Trittico delle Tentazioni di sant’Antonio, 1500 circa, Olio su tavola, Lisbona, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga © DGPC/Luísa Oliveira

Jheronimus Bosch (1453 - 1516) is known worldwide for his language, made of dreamlike visions and peculiar worlds, fires, monstrous creatures, and fantastic figures.

Open to the public until March 12th, 2023, the exhibition “Bosch and Another Renaissance” is promoted by the Municipality of Milan - Culture, Palazzo Reale and Castello Sforzesco, organized by 24 ORE Cultura-Gruppo 24 ORE and  curated by Bernard Aikema, previously a professor of Modern Art History at the University of Verona, Fernando Checa Cremades, professor of Art History at the Complutense University of Madrid and former director of the Prado Museum and Claudio Salsi, the director of Castello Sforzesco, the Archaeological and Historical Museums and professor of history of engraving at the Catholic University of Milan.

The exhibition itinerary encompasses a hundred works of art including paintings, sculptures, tapestries, engravings, bronzes, and ancient volumes, including some 30 rare and precious objects from wunderkammerns.

In this extremely rich corpus, the visitor will find some of Bosch's most celebrated masterpieces and works inspired by the Master's subjects, which had never before been displayed together in a single exhibition. In fact, Bosch is the author of very few works universally attributed to him, which are preserved in museums all around the world. Precisely because they are so rare and precious, this artist's masterpieces rarely leave the museums and even more rarely do we have the opportunity to see them together in a single exhibition. Due to their fragility and peculiar state of preservation, some works will have to be returned to their museum locations before the exhibition closes. These are the works from the Museo Làzaro Galdiano in Madrid and the two works borrowed from the Uffizi Galleries.

 

The exhibition at Palazzo Reale is not a conventional monograph one: it creates a dialogue between masterpieces traditionally attributed to the Master and important works by other Flemish, Italian, and Spanish masters, thus favouring a comparison aimed at explaining the visitor to which extent the “other” Renaissance - not just the Italian one and not just Bosch - would influence great artists such as Titian, Raphael, Gerolamo Savoldo, Dosso Dossi, El Greco and many others, in the same years or immediately after.

 

The result of a five-year research effort and the joint work of an unprecedented international cultural cooperation network including governments, embassies, museums, cultural institutes and collectors, was a unique exhibition in terms of the narrative power of an entire artistic era and the importance and diversity of the comparisons suggested by the exhibition.

Thanks to the collaboration between Italian institutions, in particular the Italian Embassy in Portugal and also the Italian Cultural Institute in Lisbon with the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, the monumental Triptych of the Temptations of St. Anthony - a work that has left Portugal only a couple of times during the 20th century and is now coming to Italy for the first time - will be displayed at Palazzo Reale. The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon, in its turn, borrowed “our” Pala Trivulzio (also known as Madonna in Glory and Saints) by Andrea Mantegna, which is part of the Castello Sforzesco's Art Collections.

Another important loan, the result of an exchange with the city of Bruges, is the Master's monumental work from the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, the Triptych of the Last Judgment, which was originally part of the collection of Venetian Cardinal Marino Grimani.

The work by Bosch borrowed from the Prado Museum, The Temptations of St. Anthony, and the masterpiece borrowed from the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, i.e. the Master's valuable panel painting St. John the Baptist, are of paramount importance for the exhibition project. Also by Bosch is the Triptych of the Hermits from the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, the collection of Cardinal Domenico Grimani, one of the most important collectors of his time and among the very few owners of Bosch's works in Italy.

THE THESIS OF THE EXHIBITION

Strange as it may sound, Bosch's fame did not begin in Flanders, where the artist was born, but in southern Europe. In fact, the “Bosch phenomenon” originated in the Mediterranean world, specifically in 16th-century Spain and Italy.

At that time, however, Renaissance classicism dominated in Italy. But it is precisely here that the fantastic and dreamlike language of Bosch and his followers, the protagonists of “another Renaissance”, would find the most fertile and mature ground, where they could grow and become a figurative and cultural model for their era and for many of the subsequent generations of artists, even centuries later.

In particular, the visitor may enjoy a comparison between the four tapestries by Bosch from the Escorial and a cartoon for the fifth tapestry - which unfortunately got lost - identified in the collections of the Uffizi Galleries.

In this regard, it is worth noting the immense importance of tapestry in sixteenth-century European culture, in artistic and economic terms: indeed, tapestry was a veritable status symbol of the elite. That is why being able to admire the entire cycle of Bosch’s tapestries is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, made possible by the loans from the Escorial and the Gallerie degli Uffizi: in fact, the four tapestries from the Escorial have never been exhibited together outside the museum, and the comparison with the Elephant cartoon, preparing the fifth tapestry in the series - now lost - is totally unprecedented.

This itinerary aims at illustrating the resounding success of Jheronimus Bosch's artistic language in southern Europe, and even overseas, in the period between the sixteenth century and the early seventeenth century, with particular reference to the collecting trends of the time, especially in Italy and Spain.

Thus, in Venice, Bosch's expressive uniqueness was readily grasped by one of the greatest collectors of the time, the man of letters and Cardinal Domenico Grimani. It is thanks to his far-sighted taste and the Grimani collection, housed in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, that today Italy hosts as many as three works by Bosch, including the Triptych of the Hermits, now on display in the rooms of Palazzo Reale.

The same can be said of Spain, where, from the 16th century until today, most of Bosch's major works can be found between the Prado Museum and the Escorial Monastery. It is no coincidence that Spanish authors are the first and most engaged critics of Bosch.

This was the geographical and cultural area where the works of the artist and his followers were especially in demand. In this regard, we could argue that Bosch’s language, in the decades following the Master's death, was at the heart of an unprecedented European entrepreneurial operation.

In fact, the fortune of Bosch’s language is at the origin of a veritable “Alternative Renaissance”, which is not much recognized, even in specialized literature.

Why does the exhibition also suggest comparisons?

The “fashion” for “Bosch-style” imagery, which became established in Spain and Italy and, later, in the rest of Europe, was reflected in a series of spectacular works of art, made using various techniques and drawing from a variety of sources, among which the stunning cycle of the four tapestries of the Escorial and the elephant tapestry by the French painter Antoine Caron stand out.

All of these works attest to the spreading in the Mediterranean region of visionary and dreamlike motifs inspired by the Flemish artist's imagery.

These creations, in turn, inspired a large number of prominent painters and engravers. Especially the prints that contributed to the dissemination of Bosch’s language, among which the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Bosch's most important follower) stands out and is featured in the exhibition with a dozen engravings inspired by his compositions.

The engravings contributed greatly to disseminating a taste for images of nocturnal fires, scenes of witchcraft, and dreamlike and magical visions. This is confirmed by works such as Marcantonio Raimondi's or Agostino Veneziano’s Stregozzo, Albrecht Dürer 's Sea Monster, Aldo Manuzio's literary-editorial masterpiece, Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and, finally, the Allegory of human life by Giorgio Ghisi.

The proliferation of rare, bizarre, and precious objects that characterizes the fashion of the eclectic collections typical of 16th-century international taste is evoked in the last room, set up as an original Wunderkammer, thanks to the collaboration of the Milan Museum of Natural History and the Castello Sforzesco Collections. The studied and calculated presence of some thirty “chamber of wonder” objects brings about immediate and direct comparison with the chaotic and unrealistic representation of one of Bosch's most challenging masterpieces: The Garden of Delights, featured in the exhibition in the dual version of a coeval painting and a tapestry.

The Wunderkammern of the last Habsburg rulers were extremely famous, especially the one of Rudolf II of Habsburg, whose portrait, the famous Vertumno painted by Milanese artist Arcimboldo (an exceptional loan from the Skokloster Castle, Sweden), is featured in the exhibition within the reproduced wunderkammer, and fully represents the eclecticism typical of this collecting taste.

BOSCH'S “VISIONS”

Magic and dreaming, with their unpredictable nature, not dominated by rationality, seem to be the outcome of a “see-though” vision of everyday reality, which reveals the anxieties, obsessions, and contradictory nature of man and society. This is the expression of the prevailing cultural climate on the eve of two momentous turning points: first the Reformation, then the Counter-Reformation.

These figurative categories are also an opportunity to investigate the depths of the inner world and its inconsistencies and reflect upon them; they were appreciated among educated and curious cultural circles and, in general, among a public who was not unfamiliar with markedly moral intentions.

Bosch's religious and secular compositions are also dominated by the concept of the complexity of reality, which in its extremes is populated with decomposed figures, paradoxical and illogical situations, deconstructed, monstrous, and cruel beings, but also with the purest figures of naked youths populating the earth without modesty: in short, a world turned upside down. In this universe, temptation and error are always lurking, ready to ruin man. The sixteenth-century man was aware that works of art carried symbolic messages that had to be interpreted in an educational and formative sense, and we think that, against this background, they especially welcomed and appreciated these subjects.

The so-called 'world of grotesques' is the other side of the same coin when speaking of the fantastic in Bosch.

In fact, the fashion for “Bosch-style” art can be connected back to an already established interest in “monstrosities” and the “grotesque”, which appeared - together with its disruptive effects - at the end of the 15th century in Tuscany and northern Italy, in paintings, drawings, engravings, and bronzes of excellent workmanship and great imagination (Bernardo Parentino, Severo da Ravenna, Marcantonio Raimondi, Giorgio Ghisi). Moreover, it can also be found in the fashion for old-fashioned grotesques, which spread in early 16th century Italy, Spain, and France.

The itinerary ends with an audio-visual work, Tríptiko. A vision inspired by Hieronymus Bosch, a journey through the Flemish painter's dream world, imagined by the artists of Karmachina. The title recalls the format of the main work having inspired the show: the Triptych of the Garden of Delights. The show includes both more figurative moments, where the reference to Bosch's panels is most evident, and more abstract ones, which freely evoke the visionary and “lysergic” nature of the master's work. The paintings are brought to life through the use of the most innovative technologies: Bosch’s painting is reworked through digital animation techniques thus participating in the construction of an immersive, evocative, and bewitching narrative.

Xavier Hufkens Gallery: Giorgio Griffa | Luce buio, Brussels, Belgium

Giorgio Griffa | Luce buio
23|09 -  5 |11| 2022

Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

 Xavier Hufkens is delighted to announce Luce buio, the gallery’s inaugural exhibition dedicated to the work of Italian abstract artist Giorgio Griffa (b.1936, Turin). From his early linear paintings of the mid-1960s to recent works from 2022, this presentation showcases all five decades of the artist’s career and highlights both the evolutions and constancies within an oeuvre that is
as eclectic as it is poetic.

 

Giorgio Griffa is primarily known for his painted canvases that are nailed directly to the wall — unprimed, unframed and unstretched — the majority of which are executed in a luminous palette of desaturated colours. The canvases are folded when not exhibited, which creates visible creases that become a vital part of the work. At first glance, it is hard to differentiate the paintings of fifty years ago with those made recently. A closer study of the oeuvre,however, reveals the existence of eleven major cycles, ranging from the Segni primari [primary marks] series of 1967 to the latest Dilemma paintings. Each corpus has a start date, but not an end. Furthermore, certain works belong to
more than one cycle, as different creative trajectories intersect and merge into each other. As the artist himself asserts, the cycles co-exist side by side, being neither stages of progress nor regression, but simply continuous variations of ‘becoming’. This latter word is crucial to understanding the oeuvre, for Griffa’s sequences of lines, patterns, letters and numbers are not just universal but also open-ended. Each work contains an element that could, in principle,
be continued indefinitely. Once the pattern is set, so to speak, we visually and mentally expect it to continue. When it doesn’t — and there is always a point at which a line, phrase or pattern seems to arbitrarily stop — we anticipate its prolongation, almost completing the sequence in our mind’s eye. Linguistically, it is analogous to stopping mid-sentence, leaving the interlocuter (in this case
the viewer) to pick up the train of thought. This makes the empty spaces in the works as important as the graphic elements themselves. What we see in Griffa’s canvases are analogous to small excerpts from potentially infinite patterns, just as the here and now is but one juncture in a far greater continuum.

 

Giorgio Griffa is both a painter and a lawyer. Until he retired from his legal practice, he devoted himself to his twin professions, a combination which takes us back to the renaissance ideal of ‘universal knowledge’. Related to this are the so-called seven liberal arts, which are divided into those of the word (grammar, logic and rhetoric; the trivium) and those of numbers (arithmetic,
music, astronomy and geometry; the quadrivium). As profoundly interconnected mechanisms for understanding nature and humanity, and as media for change and renewal, these disciplines were regarded as the components of a single encompassing ‘art’: the foundation of all learning. This once indivisible link between the realm of words and that of numbers runs like a leitmotif through
the various cycles in Griffa’s oeuvre, as seen in the distinct bodies of work depicting letters, phrases and quotes, and those departing from numerical principles, the Fibonacci sequence or the golden ratio, also known as the ‘irrational number’. Key to translating the ideas that spring from these inspiration sources, and countless other musical, historical and philosophical starting points both ancient and modern, is Griffa’s characteristically simple visual language involving archetypal signs: letters, numbers and lines. Nothing more, nothing less. Griffa does not paint what he sees, therefore, but what he thinks or, more specifically, what he knows. As he himself once said, “I do not represent anything, I paint.” This act of painting — using the lightest of all touches and ultra-fluid acrylic pigments — is thus a means of transmission, a way of articulating a deeply humanistic worldview that it is connected to every other field of knowledge. By conflating two passages from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, whom Griffa has long admired, we get close to the ideas embodied
in the work: “For the pattern is new in every moment / And every moment is a new and shocking / Valuation of all we have been [...] And so each venture / Is a new beginning.”

 

Giorgio Griffa (b. 1936, Turin; lives and works in Turin) initially completed a law degree in 1958 and became a practising lawyer. From 1960 to 1963, he learned how to paint by assisting the Italian painter Filippo Scroppo (1910-1993). Despite early associations with movements such as Arte Povera, pittura analitica [fundamental painting] and Minimalism, his work has always stood outside the mainstream currents in contemporary art. Giorgio Griffa participated in important international exhibitions such as Prospekt, Düsseldorf (1969 and 1974) and the Venice Biennale (1978, 1980 and in 2017) as well as Processes of Visualized Thought: Young Italian Avant-garde, Kunstmuseum Luzern (1970) and A Painting Exhibition of Painters who Place Painting in Question, curated by Michel Claura, Stadtische Museum, Monchengladbach (1973). Recent solo presentations of Giorgio Griffa’s works include Uno and Due, Galleria Civica d’Art Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin (2002), Neuer Kunstverein, Aschaffenburg (2005), MACRO, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2011), Golden Ratio, Mies van der Rohe Haus, Berlin (2013); A Continuous Becoming, Camden Art Centre, London (2018); Tutti i pensieri di tutti, Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto (2020-21); Marvels of the Unknown, LaM - Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, Villeneuve-d’Ascq (2021); La Recherche, Centre Pompidou (2022).

 44 rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
www.xavierhufkens.com + 32(0)2 639 67 30

 

S.M.A.K. museum: Philippe Van Snick | dynamic project, Gent, Belgium

 Philippe Van Snick | dynamic project

22|10|2022 - 5|03|2023

S.M.A.K. museum | Gent, Belgium

dynamic project showcases the wide-ranging oeuvre of Philippe Van Snick (Ghent, 1946 – Brussels, 2019). The exhibition is structured around ten clusters, a reference to the decimal system (0-9) that is intrinsic to Philippe Van Snick’s work. As an artist, he observed the complexity of life and the world around him. He translated his insights and reflections into a simplified visual language.

In the exhibition rooms, key works alternate with surprising and lesser-known ones. It is almost impossible to categorise Philippe Van Snick’s oeuvre due to the urge for freedom, openness and non-conformism that it expresses.

                                photo credit|: S.M.A.K. museum
Van Snick integrated a varying system into his methodology, one that is both mathematical and poetic in nature. As early as the 1970s, he developed his own alphabet consisting of the ten numbers (0-9) and a consistent, clear, ten-colour palette. This colour scheme includes primary colours (red, yellow and blue), secondary colours (orange, green and violet), non-colours (white and black) and material colours (gold and silver). He later added light blue. Van Snick used materials and techniques economically in favour of a concentrated visual language.

Philippe Van Snick’s oeuvre shows no abrupt stylistic breaks. It is more a meandering process of reflection in which his intentions become visible. His works are characterised by a personal note, an understated artistic gesture and the echo of vulnerability. Special attention is paid to Van Snick’s intimate living environment in Brussels, his garden and home in France, and his lifelong fascination with the beautiful structures and cycles of nature. He instinctively played with natural elements in his work, which he complemented with geometric interventions.

dynamic project presents Van Snick’s first sculptural analyses and his mathematics-based explorations of time and space. Also on view are conceptual photographs and short films. The exhibition reflects on Van Snick’s later experiments with colour, in which he started mixing the ten shades. This gave rise to a more nuanced colour palette that was even closer to his internal world, while also building on his interest in the landscape, the external realm.

Philippe Van Snick’s artistic production also includes many innovative and permanent public art projects.

Curators: Marta Mestre & Luk Lambrecht

*****

Biography
Philippe Van Snick (Ghent, 1946 – Brussels, 2019) is one of Belgium’s most important
contemporary artists. Combining the legacy of modern abstract art and the conceptual
art of the 1970s, his work explores a field of speculations on the perception of the world and life. Van Snick’s work has repeatedly been considered from the perspective of the fundamentals of painting, yet recent reviews of the oeuvre have shed light on his recurring experiments. These traverse a wide range of disciplines: conceptual photography, film, installation, artist books, and site-specific projects.Like a spiral, Philippe Van Snick’s work constantly unfolds from the infinitesimal to the infinite. His artistic proposals not only encompass mathematical rigor but also an experimental attitude that embraces the element of chance in life. They are poetic and unconventional, at once tense and airy, empathetic and yearning for the world, still and dynamic. Van Snick created his first works after graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent: abstract ‘white’ paintings, drawings and installations. At the end of the 1960s, he participated in the 6th Paris Biennale at the Musée d ́Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. He soon emerged as one of the most promising artists of his generation. In the midst of the cultural and political upheavals of the 1970s, his affinity with the
conceptual art of the time prompted him to study communication theory, indeterminacy, and physics. This, in turn, propelled him towards a ‘dynamic’ worldview. He exhibited in leading museums and galleries in Antwerp and Brussels, such as the X-One Gallery, the Wide White Space and Plus Kern, together with artists such as Daniel Buren, David Lamelas, Ian Wilson and Raoul De Keyser. Van Snick developed his ‘decimal system’ within the context of conceptual photography, creating simple works that addressed notions of time and duration,
everyday life and human action. The system, which makes his work unique, revolves
around a series of numbers composed of ten digits from 0 to 9, which can be endlessly
combined. Van Snick subsequently widened the scope of his practice by combining numbers and colours. He also turned to painting, using an abstract, minimal language that was recognised in the art world. Instead of slipping into a hermetic, self-referential formalism, Van Snick wanted to embrace the endless variations in the world, nature and human action. In his references, the playful legacy of concretism – in the guise of Georges Vantongerloo – is ever present in the background. Many of his projects attest to an affective worldview:a continuous ‘fair play’ between the subject and the conditions of perception and experience. Philippe Van Snick’s ‘grammar’ and his free spirit are revealed in his numerous projects, mainly in Brussels and Ghent, but also in Japan, Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom or Brazil. Amongst many other themes, his work is characterised by subjects such as duality Traditionele L-vormige kamer (1969) or Day | Nacht (1984, 1986); the instability of perception Polychrome Déstabilisé (1979) and Monochrome Déstabilisé 1980), or Pans de Sensation (2005-07); the microscopic and the cosmologicalInstability of Fundamentals (1990); and the place of the observer Territorium (1999and 2000).Throughout his artistic career, Philippe Van Snick dedicated himself to capturing theunstoppable rhythm and movement of nature. This determined his choice of arigorously conceptual visual language. He gained these experiences in the intimatesetting of his own garden, a domestic extension of his studio and life, and an importantplace for the contemplation of the essence of his work

S.M.A.K. museum

Jan Hoetplein 1
9000 Gent | BELGIUM  

more here:  https://smak.be