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  • Make Art Valuable And Important

    Make Art Valuable And Important

    For artists in the period before the modern era (before about 1800 or so), the process of selling art was different than it is now. In the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance works of art were commissioned, that is, they were ordered by a patron (the person paying for the work of art), and then made to order. A patron usually entered into a contract with an artist that specified how much he would be paid, what kinds of materials would be used, how long it would take to complete, and what the subject of the work would be. Not what we would consider artistic freedom—but it did have its advantages. You didn’t paint something and then just hope it would sell, the way artists often do now.

    One way to understand this is to think about what you “order” to have made for you today. A pizza comes to mind—ordered from the cook at the local pizza parlor—”I’ll have a large pie with pepperoni,” or a birthday cake from a baker “I’d like a chocolate cake with mocha icing and blue letters that say ‘Happy Birthday Jerry.’” Or perhaps you ordered a set of bookshelves from a carpenter or a wedding dress from a seamstress?

    Art may have the ability to cheer us up, to entertain us, but it also has the power to effect real change in the world.

    Pablo Picasso once even went so far as to declare, “Painting is not made to decorate apartments; it is an offensive and defensive instrument of war against the enemy.” Some artworks throughout history have revolutionized the way we think about politics, social issues and even art itself. From cave paintings to soup cans, princesses to soviet leaders, these are the paintings that have had an undeniable, impact on the art world and beyond.

    The oldest painting made quite the global kerfuffle – but not until 17,000 years after it was painted. In 1940, a group of young men came across a cave in the French countryside, inside of which they discovered someone of the world’s most extraordinary examples of prehistoric art. Whilst not the oldest example of human painting, the caves are one of the earliest examples of sophisticated painting, demonstrating a key moment in the human drive to make art. 

  • The Evolution of Visual Art More

    The Evolution of Visual Art More

    Art is created and enjoyed by many people for many reasons. However, one of the things that art does is extend and expand our shared common visual language. When new visual ideas are first introduced by the artist, they are often seen as shocking, and perhaps even as incomprehensible. However, with time the best and most effective of these ideas are accepted. There is nothing harder than trying to grasp what was shocking or illuminating about certain images, or ways of making images, once the shock is gone, and we have all absorbed this bit of visual data into our own vocabularies. Artists show us new ways to see familiar things, and how to interpret new situations and events through various kinds of visual shorthand. This creation of visual language may be the artist’s intention, or it may be a side effect of other purposes. So what are some of the purposes that art fulfills?

    Probably the oldest purpose of art is as a vehicle for religious ritual. From the prehistoric cave paintings of France to the Sistine Chapel, art has served religion. For centuries the Church was the primary patron of artists. In traditional societies even today, the primary purpose of art is religious or ceremonial.

    Art may also serve as a commemoration of an important event. The event may be of major historical importance, such as the coronation of Josephine by Napoleon as recorded by the artist David, or it may be important only to the participants, like the image of a wedding or a baptism.

    Art has often served as propaganda or social commentary. Propaganda images are attempts to persuade us toward particular viewpoints or actions promoted by public or private institutions such as political parties, lobbyists, governments, or religious groups. The propaganda purpose may be one we approve of, such as World War II efforts to get women behind the war effort, as epitomized in Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter. It might also be a purpose we disapprove of. In either case, the power of visual images has frequently been used to persuade masses of people to accept beliefs, take action, or follow leaders. The artist as social commentator may simply make us more aware of the human condition as he/she perceives it, without suggesting particular action. All societies engage in propaganda, but here are some links to propaganda art created in China, and by the Allies during World War I. and during World War II.

    Art may be simply a means of recording of visual data— telling the “truth” about what we see. After the Renaissance, artists became preoccupied with new ways of capturing reality such as the use of linear perspective, and the realism possible through the use of oil painting technique. In time, artists like Courbet and Cezanne (and many who followed them) began in various ways to challenge the basic idea of what it is for an image to be true and real.

  • Modern Wing Highlights Exhibitions

    Modern Wing Highlights Exhibitions

    Among the department’s highlights are iconic works by members of the School of Paris, such as Balthus, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Amedeo Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso. The department is also rich in works by the circle of early American modernists around Alfred Stieglitz, including Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, and John Marin; large-scale paintings by Abstract Expressionists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko; and modern design, from Josef Hoffmann and members of the Wiener Werkstätte to Art Nouveau jewelry by René Lalique. The collection developed thanks to extraordinary gifts and bequests of works of art as well as acquisition funds. In recent years these holdings have been augmented by acquisitions of major collections—including the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of twentieth-century masterworks and the Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection of postwar paintings—as well as purchases of renowned single paintings, such as Jasper Johns’s White Flag and Anselm Kiefer’s Bohemia Lies by the Sea.

    In 1987 the Museum opened the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing (galleries 900–925) dedicated to the display of modern and contemporary art. The fifth-, fourth-, and second-floor collection galleries offer a deeper experience of art through all mediums and by artists from more diverse geographies and backgrounds than ever before. A general chronological spine unites the three floors and serves as a touchstone of continuity for visitors. Individual galleries, some of which will be medium-specific, delve into presentations of art and ideas that only MoMA’s collection can offer.

    Recognizing that there is no single or complete history of modern and contemporary art, the Museum will systematically rotate and reinstall one-third of these collection galleries every six months.

  • The Artist’s Studio View Inside

    The Artist’s Studio View Inside

    The enormous Studio is without doubt Courbet’s most mysterious composition. However, he provides several clues to its interpretation: “It’s the whole world coming to me to be painted”, he declared, “on the right, all the shareholders, by that I mean friends, fellow workers, art lovers. 
    On the left is the other world of everyday life, the masses, wretchedness, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, people who make a living from death”.

    In the first group, those on the right, we can recognise the bearded profile of the art collector Alfred Bruyas, and behind him, facing us, the philosopher Proudhon. The critic Champfleury is seated on a stool, while Baudelaire is absorbed in a book. The couple in the foreground personify art lovers, and near the window, two lovers represent free love.
    On the side of “everyday life”, we find a priest, a merchant, a hunter who somewhat resembles Napoleon III, and even an unemployed worker and a beggar girl symbolising poverty. We can also see the guitar, the dagger and the hat, which, together with the male model, condemn traditional academic art.
    In this vast allegory, truly a manifesto painting, each figure has a different meaning. And in the middle of all this stands Courbet himself, flanked by benevolent figures: a female muse, naked like the Truth, a child and a cat. In the centre, the painter presents himself as a mediator.

    Courbet thus affirms the artist’s role in society in an enormous scene on the scale of a history painting. When faced with the rejection of his painting, intended for the 1855 Universal Exhibition, Courbet built a “Pavilion of Realism” at his own expense. Here, outside the official event, he organised his own exhibition, which also includedA Burial at Ornans, so that his work could be available to the whole of society.

  • Artist Talk: Max McNeal Modern Era

    Artist Talk: Max McNeal Modern Era

    Obviously street culture has been mixing these influences together in a never-ending lust for experimentation; punk with hip-hop, skateboarding with tattoo, performance art with graffiti – for the past four decades at least. The folk tradition of cutting and pasting predates all our  modern shape-shifting by centuries, but institutional/organizational curating often often has a preference for sorting street culture disciplines into separate piles.

    With the inaugural exhibition “City Lights” MOMO, Swoon, Faile, and Maya Hayuk each bring what made their street practice unique, but with an added dimension of maturity and development. Without exception each of these artists have benefitted from the Internet and its ability to find audiences who respond strongly to the work with physical location a secondary consideration. Now as world travelers these four have evolved and refined their practice and MIMA gives them room to expand comfortably.

    On opening day (which was delayed by weeks because of the recent airport and transit bombing here) the crowd who queued on an overcast day down the block along the Canal in Molenbeek was undaunted by the wait and expectant. Housed in a former beer factory, the greater collection includes large installations by the marquee namesin the main spaces and smaller pieces ranging from Stephen Powers and Todd James to Piet Parra and Cleon Patterson in galleries evoking whitebox galleries.

    If the popular imagination of “museum plus Street Art” conjures anything for you, it may present some kind of overture toward the continuation of the street into the formal space and vice-versa. Faile’s two-color stencils and slaughtering of walls inside clearly connect to ones they have done over the last 15 years and that are currently on New York streets. Their huge prayer wheel assembled here was actually shown in the center of Times Square last fall with tens of thousands of tourists climbing it, sitting upon it, posing for selfies with it and spinning it, so the continuum is very much intact in that respect.

  • Conversation: Ed Ruscha Great Artist

    Join us for this year’s annual Woman’s Board lecture and hear from acclaimed artist Ed Ruscha, as he speaks about his prolific career and practice that spans drawing, painting, photography, film, printmaking, and publishing. 

    JEFFREY BROWN: This attraction of yours to the road, to what’s along the roadside — it began in your youth, I guess? Tell me, where did it come from?

    ED RUSCHA: I traveled around a bit with my family on driving trips of the western U.S., and maybe that — these long drives, mostly on US 66 and other roads, too — maybe inspired me to see the country. And some of them were long, even boring journeys that opened me to– I don’t know, new vistas or something that I didn’t have while I was growing up in Oklahoma City.

    JEFFREY BROWN: And how did it become a theme of your art? Was it an overt thing that you decided to pursue as a kind of content for you as an artist or just developed naturally? How did that happen?

    ED RUSCHA: Well I never sat down, planned anything out. There was no strategy, no agenda or anything. They seemed to be individual attractions I had for things like gasoline stations and, oh, like telephone poles and almost things that are overlooked or forgotten. And these things impress me in their own simple ways, I guess. The architecture of America, and especially the west, had an effect, and I began to focus, sort of piece by piece, of these individual things in my art, and somehow they began to add up.

    JEFFREY BROWN: What did they add up to?

    ED RUSCHA: Well, they added up to really nothing more than what this whole venture is, which is an unfinished journey. You know, it’s like I’m trying to follow perspective and maybe I’m searching for the vanishing point — that I hope I never reach!

    JEFFREY BROWN: I’m looking at the catalog now, so I have it open to one of the very iconic paintings of yours, the Standard Oil Station in Amarillo Texas, 1963. So just to use that as an example: describe it for me.

    ED RUSCHA: It’s like a box with words on it. And that, to me, is what most of this architecture that attracted me. On the highway and in these little towns, I would see boxes with words on them, and it began to creep into my aesthetic. And also there are, like, other elements to it that I was always impressed with. Those old movies that had passenger trains, where they would start in on one little tiny point in the very right hand corner of the screen and they would zoom into place to the upper left hand corner, and the passenger train seemed to– it was a like a bridge picture that would show the characters in the movie, you know, traveling. And that zoom factor, to me, had a place in making a picture. And I guess I was putting two and two together, that maybe it’s that element of a passenger train zooming into focus. And I began to see these gas stations as maybe doing the same thing.

  • New on Art View New Exhibition

    New on Art View New Exhibition

    The museum continually acquires new works by gift or by purchase that expand the stories that we tell in our galleries.

    For Ego Painting, Faith Ringgold borrowed a compositional format from Kuba textile designs of the Democratic Republic of Congo to create a multiplicity of word associations. Part of her Black Light series, through which the artist addressed blackness as both a color and a precarious social identify, Ego Painting features equally dark colors placed directly adjacent to one another, emphasizing their contrast and idiosyncrasy. It is one of the first works by Ringgold to incorporate text in its composition and is the first painting by the artist to enter the museum’s holdings.

    Intimately scaled crosses, such as this newly acquired work, were extremely popular devotional objects in 17th-century Spain. This example is exceptional as it is dated and signed by a female artist, María Josefa Sánchez. Very little is known about Sánchez; she was active 1639–49, probably in Castile, and the only works currently attributed to her are four other crucifixes.

    The works that Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst created during and after his studies in Rome often feature candlelight or torchlight in night scenes, presenting a gentler, more meditative variation on the dramatic light effects employed by his Italian peers. This painting expands the range and complexity of the Art Institute’s collection of Dutch paintings. Moreover, as a character or head study—called a tronie, in the parlance of the day—it complements our great Rembrandt, Old Man with a Gold Chain (1631).

  • Global Fine Art Awards History

    Global Fine Art Awards History

    The GFAA program honors innovation and excellence in exhibition design, historical context, educational value, and public appeal. This annual awards program recognizes the best curated fine art and design exhibited around the world- in museums, galleries, fairs, biennials and public installations.

    In addition to the research-based nominations, GFAA accepts open calls from museums, biennials, fairs, galleries and other art organizations. Individual patrons may nominate their favorite exhibitions as well.The Nominating Committee reviews the slate prepared by the Art Research Committee, and presents their findings and final approvals to the Judges.  The Judges modify and select the final slate of Nominees, then vote on the Finalists and Winners.

    In 2018, the fifth edition of the program juries 13 Awards, and announces a final slate of 94 Nominees- from 6 continents, 49 cities and 31 countries across the globe. Whereas many are from the top 100 art museums visited in the world (April 2017, The Art Newspaper), the majority (55%) are from smaller institutions, independent projects, galleries, fairs and biennials.

    The culmination of the annual program took place on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 in celebration of all GFAA Nominees and the presentation of the Winners of the 2018 Global Fine Art Awards. The black-tie gala was held at the Harold Pratt Mansion on Park Avenue and 68th St in NYC, headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations.

    The digital age provides both opportunities and risks for museums and other art organizations to grow their audiences.  Digital representation of exhibitions, and artworks for sale through auction houses, galleries and online media companies, creates a completely global audience, and a unique curated experience.

    However, nothing will ever replace the feeling and sensory experience of seeing exhibitions live.

    Where else can we “see” and experience a virtual collection of the best exhibitions from around the world? As far as we are aware, nowhere else besides the GFAA program.

    There is so much to experience and share – and we believe that the GFAA program will help educate people around the world about art and its global messages.

  • The Heroes In Art Closely

    The Heroes In Art Closely

    As archetypes of human virtue and vice, the gods and heroes of ancient Greece and Rome have figured prominently in Western culture. In art, they have been portrayed time and time again, especially during the Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical periods.

    Gods and Heroes in Art aims to help museum patrons and art lovers recognize the legendary characters of classical antiquity in art. The characters are each described in entries summarizing their distinctive stories, their special attributes, and the ways in which artists have depicted them. Each entry is richly illustrated with reproductions of works of art in which the god or hero is pictured, giving readers a chance to examine images of the character and to understand the work of art better.

    The informative guide first surveys the pantheon of the Greco-Roman world, then focuses on characters from the Trojan War and The Odyssey. The next sections describe kings, philosophers, warriors, and other historical figures. The book concludes with useful indexes, including a list of iconographic symbols associated with the subjects, and a bibliography of essential resources.

    Art has saved lives. Whether it has been through writing, movies, or painting, many people have named art as a huge influence in their lives. So I always find it interesting that people don’t think of artists as heroes.

  • How To Display Art Now

    How To Display Art Now

    It’s time to master the prop-and-lean. After all, it’s a stylish way to get by sans nails and a drill. Whether you’re looking to dress up your dining room or add some pizazz to the front hall, enlist the help of shelving to put your favorite pieces on display. Displayed alongside books, dishware or plants, your artwork adds visual dimension and drama to an otherwise understated detail.

    Okay, so this not might fly if your style is more on the traditional side, but if you’re ready to push the envelop, washi tape is the way to go. It gives you the flexibility to switch up prints, photographs and posters at a moment’s notice, and will even save you a few bucks on frames. This is a particuarly great solution for work spaces and inspiration boards. For maximum impact opt for tape in vibrant colors or funky patterns.

    To fill a wall with beautiful art, head to your local salvage store to find an assortment of old frames. Give them a quick makeover by painting them the same color or coordinating color scheme, then hang them in a gallery on your wall. Using a variety of sizes creates a gathered-over-time vibe. Wide white mats unify the colorful mix of prints.

    Layering art on shelves or mantles, instead of placing on the wall, makes it easy to move pieces and quickly change the look of your room.

    You can mount one large piece on the wall – lean and overlap the others below it on a bookshelf or credenza – a very low fuss bohemian feel.

    You can also achieve layering using various different types of framing and photo mounting methods. There are so many great ways to print your photos these days that it is quite easy to turn them into pieces of art. Layering wood prints with acrylic prints and gallery frames results in a very eclectic and interesting look.