Vincent is Back!

Van Gogh dazzles at Netherlands' Kroeller-Mueller

With the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam closed for renovations until April, the world's second-largest collection of the Dutch master's work is stepping into the limelight.

The Kroeller-Mueller museum in the eastern Netherlands is not as well-known but is still considered a jewel among connoisseurs. It has revamped the layout of its central rooms, giving more space and more focus to its very best works.

"Van Gogh really stands central now, both physically in the museum and in the collection as a whole," director Lisette Pelsers said in a telephone interview.

This week the museum announced "Vincent is Back," because after a time in which many of its 91 Vincent Van Gogh paintings, 180 drawings and other works have been on loan, they are set to return in style.

It has opened "Native Soil," the first of a two-part exhibition looking at the spectacular changes that Van Gogh underwent in his artistic career, which took place almost entirely in the decade from 1880 to 1890. The appropriately wintery exhibit focuses on Van Gogh's formative years in the Netherlands, with a dark palette and simple, somber subjects.

"Native Soil" culminates in what is widely regarded as Van Gogh's first great masterpiece, the 1885 "Potato Eaters." It also shows smaller works that presage the colorful brilliance to come, such as the 1885 "Head of a Woman Wearing a White Hat," which may have been part of Van Gogh's preparations for "Potato Eaters,;" and the emotive 1882 study "Sorrowful Old Man" in black chalk.

"You can really see him struggling to find his style as an artist," Pelsers said. [more...]

Maeterlinck Lives!

In Claus Guth's haunting new production of Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande," the characters move as if in a trance between two worlds — both of them unrelentingly bleak.

The French composer's only completed opera, starring baritone Christian Gerhaher and soprano Christiane Karg in the title roles, was seen Thursday night in the seventh of eight performances by the Frankfurt Opera this fall. The final one is Saturday night.

The story, adapted by Maurice Maeterlinck from his own symbolist play, sounds straightforward when reduced to its elements: Golaud, grandson of King Arkel, meets a mysterious, much younger woman, marries her and brings her home to his family's castle. She and his half-brother, Pelleas, fall in love, and Golaud's suspicions that they are having an affair (apparently unfounded) lead him to murder his rival. Melisande dies after giving birth to Golaud's child.

But in Maeterlinck's world nothing is quite what it seems, and as the characters wander through the story, their words, feelings and motivations are often impossible to pin down. Debussy captures this atmosphere of dreamy uncertainty and shifting reality with a score whose chromaticism continually eludes the musical resolution of traditional key structure. [more...]

Picasso, Matisse, Monets stolen from Dutch museum

What's with all the art thefts lately?  Is there no security anymore in these big museums?

Seven paintings by artists including Pablo Picasso, Matisse and Claude Monet were stolen from a museum in Rotterdam in an early-hours heist, Dutch police said Tuesday.

The theft at the Kunsthal museum is one of the largest in years in the Netherlands, and is a stunning blow for the private Triton Foundation collection, which was being exhibited publicly as a group for the first time. [more...]

Van Gogh Moves

AMSTERDAM (AP) — The operation began moments after the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam closed Sunday evening. Men removed alarm tags from behind some of Vincent Van Gogh's greatest masterpieces, including "Sunflowers," ''Irises" and the famously crooked "Bedroom," and quickly pulled the paintings down from the museum's walls.

Fortunately, they were not thieves carrying out an epic heist, but curators preparing the works for transport to a temporary location across town where they will be on display for the next seven months while the museum is closed for renovations.

In all, 75 pieces — the cream of the biggest collection of Vincent Van Gogh's work — are moving to The Hermitage, an Amsterdam dependency of the Russian state museum. [more...]

The Radiant Child

I've always been a huge fan of Jean-Michel Basquiat... this is the best documentary I've ever seen on him.  It really emphasizes how prolific he was and captures the genius of his mind. Jean-Michel Basquiet: The Radiant Child - http://www.jean-michelbasquiattheradiantchild.com/

"The Entertainer" Has Passed

The word "prolific" gets tossed around a lot, but it couldn't be more appropriate in discussing the work of the late, great Marvin Hamlisch. This is especially true in considering his many contributions to film over the past five-plus decades. [more...]

Hamlisch brought us so much wonderful music in his relatively short life... it still echoes in our hearts and minds each day. Here are some of my favorite movies that Marvin scored:

The Way We Were
The Sting
Take the Money and Run
Bananas
Sophie's Choice
Same Time, Next Year
Seems Like Old Times

Stolen Matisse Painting Reportedly Recovered After Almost a Decade

A $3 million missing Matisse painting that had been stolen nearly 10 years ago and swapped for a fake at a Venezuelan museum has reportedly been recovered by FBI agents posing as art collectors at the Loews Hotel in Miami Beach Tuesday. A man and a woman allegedly tried to sell Henri Matisse's 1925 "Odalisque in Red Pants" to undercover agents for $1.5 million... [more...]

More on Matisse... http://www.henri-matisse.net/

There is a marvelous biography called The Unknown Matisse by Hilary Spurling, a brilliant scholar. Second volume: Matisse the Master : A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour: 1909-1954.

Marina: Provocateur

Watching HBO's documentary, Marina Abramovic The Artist is Present, for me, was a very moving experience, to say the least.  It's like going through withdrawals or some sort of spiritual exorcism.  Understanding and yielding to the silence and mysteries within is very painful. But stepping through that Door of Pain becomes transformative.  For Marina Abramovic, it's a way of life on which she built an entire career as a performance artist from the early '70s to the present.  Her intense beauty and haunting charisma will seduce you into another world - into her world.  And yet the world in which we live becomes more than just her world; she sends a universal invitation to challenge your soul in a way it's never submitted to before.

A pioneer of performance art, Marina Abramović (born Yugoslavia, 1946) began using her own body as the subject, object, and medium of her work in the early 1970s. For the exhibition Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, The Museum of Modern Art’s first performance retrospective, Abramović performed in the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium every day the Museum was open between March 14 and May 31, 2010. Visitors were encouraged to sit silently across from the artist for a duration of their choosing, becoming participants in the artwork. This comprehensive photo gallery contains a record of each participant. Please select “Show info” to see the date and duration of each visitor’s participation.” The Artist Is Present is Abramovic’s longest performance to date. [more...]

Celebrating Books in America

The Library of Congress, the world’s largest repository of knowledge and information, began a multiyear “Celebration of the Book” with an exhibition on “Books That Shaped America.” The initial books in the exhibition are displayed below.


“This list is a starting point,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. “It is not a register of the ‘best’ American books – although many of them fit that description. Rather, the list is intended to spark a national conversation on books written by Americans that have influenced our lives, whether they appear on this initial list or not.”


We hope you will view the list, nominate other titles, and most importantly, choose to read and discuss some of the books on this list, reflecting America’s unique and extraordinary literary heritage, which the Library of Congress makes available to the world.

More information: Read the news release

Sandy's Book Recommendations...

The Steins Collect at the Met

Not since visiting the Chester Dale Collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. have I been so moved by an exhibit that was so vast and just seemed to keep going on and on. As we walked through gallery after gallery of the exhibition  "The Steins Collect" on its last day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was clear that Gertrude Stein, her brothers, Leo and Michael and Michael's wife Sarah were some of the most important collectors and therefore influences on what you and I view today as some of the greatest and most original art of all time. About the Exhibition.


I've read Gertrude Stein's writings and a lot of what's been written about her and just like "Midnight in Paris," Woody Allen's recent film where Stein is portrayed by Kathy Bates, it's hard not to want to get to know more about her once you see this show.  She was a shrewd collector and knew when to sell and trade the masterpieces she was smart enough to recognize and buy - to her advantage.  It's one of the most fascinating stories in art history with so many players; and on display are included paintings, drawings, sculptures and sketches by up and coming artists that were also influenced by the painters the Steins supported.


Read The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
The Steins Collect catalogue