Germany's Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation Refuses to Return Nefertiti Bust to Egypt

BERLIN (REUTERS).- A German foundation rejected Monday an Egyptian request to return the 3,400-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti, a sculpture which draws over one million viewers annually to a Berlin museum.
Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) sent the request to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which runs the Neues Museum in the German capital where the bust is kept.
"The foundation's position on the return of Nefertiti remains unchanged," foundation president Professor Hermann Parzinger said in a statement. "She is and remains the ambassador of Egypt in Berlin."
Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, appealed to the foundation seeking the return of the bust, famed for its almond-shaped eyes and swan-like neck. However, the foundation said it did not consider the letter an official state request as it had not been signed by Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif.
German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt discovered the bust about 275 km south of Cairo in 1912, and it was taken to Germany the following year.
Hawass, who sent a similar letter in 2009, has said in the past that documents presented by the Neues Museum confirmed Borchardt tried to pass the bust off as a less significant find to secure it for Berlin. The museum has said it was acquired lawfully and Egypt had no legal claim to it.

The SCA, which Hawass heads, said in an email that its request had been approved by both Prime Minister Nazif and the Egyptian ministry of culture.
"This request is a natural consequence of Egypt's long-standing policy of seeking the restitution of all archaeological and historical artefacts that have been taken illicitly out of the country," it said.
Hawass has campaigned to repatriate several pharaonic treasures in recent years, including the Rosetta Stone now in the British Museum.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey in Berlin and Patrick Werr in Cairo; writing by Brian Rohan; editing by David Stamp)
http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=44425

MORGAN HERRIN

     Construction grade 2x4s are the material of choice for Morgan Herrin's intricate hand-carved sculptures. It takes almost a year to complete a project such as this one, the study of a knight in 15th century armour morphing out of a series of stalactites and stalagmites. The contrasts in this large-scale wood sculpture bring the viewer to consider the passage of time and the effects of nature. The classical aspect of Herrin's work is heightened by the attention to detail. Here is what Morgan has written about his new work:

     "Untitled Knight is the product of the combination of two subjects: 15th century plate armor, and geological cave structure. Studied separately, these two subjects are completely unrelated. The man-made geometric precision of plate armor is formally opposite the flowing, organic nature of stalactites and stalagmites. Seen together, these two parts present a striking contrast in form and create a theme of time and the effects of nature. The pose of the figure and the general composition are references to the classical sculpture “The Dying Gaul” of ancient Roman antiquity. Rendered entirely in laminated construction-grade 2 x 4s, the material itself irreverently contradicts this classical allusion, and at the same time draws attention to our own culture’s reliance on the fast, cheap, and impermanent."

Morgan Herrin Biography     
        
1992-1993       Private Sculpture Lessons with Martin Delabono, Dallas TX            
1997                Life Drawing Lessons at Southern Methodist University, Dallas TX            
1997 - 1998    Private Life Drawing Lessons with Ellen Soderquist, Dallas TX            
1998 - 2002    BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond VA            
2002 - 2005    MFA from The Ohio State University Sculpture program, Columbus OH    
       

Selected Exhibitions               
   
Mulherin Pollard Projects, 317 10th Ave, New York, NY
Lost World, ADA gallery, Richmond, VA            
Scope New York, ADA gallery            
Snap, Morlan Gallery, Lexington, KY            
Diamonds Cut Diamonds, Rare, New York, NY            
Columbus Biennale, Columbus OH            
Exchange Rate, Richmond VA            
FEAR, Polka Dot Gallery, Richmond,VA

Thanks to John Pollard,
owner & director of ADA GALLLERY

and co-owner & director of MULHERIN POLLARD PROJECT

Ned Martin - Time Passages

Jan 5-27, reception Sat 8 Jan:

STUDIO VOGUE Gallery is pleased to welcome Ned Martin as one of several artists featured in Time Passages, our winter exhibition of gallery artists, including Jackie Hall, J. A. Fligel, Donna Koster, Victor Oriecuia, and Vivien Schmidt ... more

Time Passages. STUDIO VOGUE Gallery is pleased to welcome Ned Martin as one of several artists featured in Time Passages, our winter exhibition of gallery artists. Martin transports the viewer to a familiar place through a universal language and gives pause, even for a brief moment, to celebrate the unique quality of his subject. Martin will be joined by Jackie Hall, J. A. Fligel, Donna Koster, Victor Oriecuia, and Vivien Schmidt among others. This eclectic selection is sure to warm up a winter's day with works in oil and acrylic, bronze and marble sculpture, and fine art photography.

Ned Martin is a Realism Oil Painter who lives in New York, New York. He spent his early life and his years as an art major at Towson State University in Maryland exploring various painting media including acrylics, watercolor, pastels, and gouache. Several years ago, he began painting in oils and furthered his formal art training at The Schuler School of Fine Art in Baltimore where he learned the traditional oil painting techniques and principles of Jacques Maroger and the Old Masters.

Ned has embraced the Schuler School experience and continues to meticulously prepare his own wood panels and grind his own paint. While his paintings appear realistic, upon close scrutiny the viewer is delighted with broken impressionistic layers of paint that imply realism. Ned invests considerably in scrubbing, scratching, and scrapping layers of textured paint until a realistic form reveals itself.
 

STUDIO VOGUE Gallery – representing mid-career and emerging artists from Canada and around the world ... more

STUDIO VOGUE Gallery – representing mid-career and emerging artists from Canada and around the world.

274 Avenue Road, Toronto ON M4V 2G7 (just N of Dupont)
Wed-Sat 12-6. Mon & Tues by appointment
T: 416 459 9809
info@studiovoguegallery.com
www.studiovoguegallery.com

A Kingly Velázquez Is Discovered at the Met, Capping Off a Busy Year for the Old Masters

NEW YORK— Just in time for Christmas, scholars at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have given themselves a giant Velázquez, though in truth it is more of a re-gifting — the portrait of Philip IV of Spain had originally come into the collection nearly 100 years ago, but its attribution was downgraded in 1973 to the Old Master's studio. Now, a new cleaning effort has returned the work conclusively to the revered painter's column, according to the New York Times.
Despite possessing a 1624 receipt for the painting that was signed by Velázquez, the Met had reconsidered the portrait's authorship in the 1970s as part of a general auditing of its European painting collection that humbled attributions on 15 percent of its holdings, with the Philip canvas raising doubts in part because of over-varnishing inflicted by its previous owner, legendary dealer Lord Duveen. But a year-long restoration process of the work — which has not weathered the years well, losing an eye at one point, possibly to a vandal — has persuaded connoisseurs that the doubts had been misplaced. "One of the greatest painters of Western tradition — and a royal portrait to boot — is vindicated," Met European paintings chairman Keith Christiansen told the Times. Velázquez scholar Jonathan Brown has likewise welcomed the news. "Although it has suffered losses, what remains is by Velázquez," he said.
The reattribution comes improbably hard on the heels of another Velázquez discovery in the Met's collection, a circa 1630 "Portrait of a Man" that was determined to be by the artist's hand, and not his studio, in September of 2009. But the New York institution is not alone in finding treasures under its nose, and the Old Masters have been popping up everywhere this year. A third Velázquez was discovered by a specialist at the Yale University Art Gallery this summer — making for a remarkable spate of discoveries given that the painter is known to have made only about 110 works during his lifetime.
Then an enormous peasant scene by Pieter Bruegel the Elder was recognized by the Prado in Madrid, a Rembrandt was noticed hanging in the waiting room of the Rotterdam's Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, a giant once-waterlogged crucifix painting was attributed to Giotto in Florence, a potential Michelangelo pietà painting was spotted in an upstate New York home, and the Vatican even said it had uncovered a previously unknown Caravaggio just in time for the 400th anniversary of his death... but had to take back the claim when it was widely debunked. 

By ARTINFO Published: December 21, 2010
Image is courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme

By STAN PARCHIN
The J. Paul Getty Museum is the first of three venues to present The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (June 15-September 12, 2010). This much-anticipated special exhibition, the first of its kind in nearly 40 years, features 99 works by the French artist (1824-1904) and important contemporaries. In light of recent scholarship, the show reconsiders the life and oeuvre of the academic painter and sculptor whose brilliant career was eclipsed by the development of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and the Modernist avant-garde. In Los Angeles, California, the installation is organized thematically and chronologically by Mary Morton, Curator and Head of the Department of French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art and Scott Allen, the Getty's Assistant Curator of Paintings.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824-1904). The Snake Charmer (ca. 1870). Oil on canvas. 83.4 x 122.1 cm. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

Gérôme and Painting
During the early 1840s, Jean-Léon Gérôme excelled at the atelier (studio) of noted Parisian painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856). He continued his education with his mentor in Italy. After his return to France, Gérôme attended the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts. He competed unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome in 1846, having been disqualified in the final round because of inadequate figure-drawing skills. This disappointment profoundly influenced the artist's perpetual preoccupation with painting the perfect nude.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, 1827-1875). Portrait of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1872-73). Marble. H. 61 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum.

Despite the setback, the indefatigable Gérôme's The Cockfight (1847), a genre scene of adolescent sexuality set in a classical landscape, was well-received at that year's Salon. The recognition bolstered the artist's ambitions as a history painter throughout most of the next decade. He was foiled once again when the critics' disliked his monumental allegorical The Age of Augustus (1855), an official commission for French Emperor Napoleon III (r. 1851-70).

The disillusioned Gérôme then turned his attentions to small-scale historical and Orientalist compositions. The Death of Caesar (1867) was acknowledged for the artist's meticulous rendering of the immense Roman Senate's archaeological details as well as its portrayal of the dramatic events that unfolded following the ruler's cold and calculated assassination. The inventive imagery of Gérôme's subsequent The Snake Charmer (ca. 1870) was due, in part, to his 1853 trip to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey). There he derived inspiration from everyday life in the East to paint exotic scenes with the realistic clarity of photography, a new medium he greatly admired.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824-1904). The Death of Caesar (1867). Oil on canvas. 85.5 x 145.5 cm. Walters Art Museum.

The Lure of Sculpture
Always interested in antique art, Gérôme devoted much of his later career to sculpture, frequently cross-referencing his paintings and statues. The artist premiered his first bronze sculpture, a gladiator trampling upon his victim, at the Universal Exposition of 1878.

The current exhibition displays 10 of Gérôme's works in bronze, marble, ivory and mixed media. It also fittingly includes the painter's famous oil on canvas Pygmalion and Galatea (1890), in which he retells the ancient Roman myth about a sculptor who fell in love with his own creation brought to life by a goddess.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904). Pygmalion and Galatea (ca. 1890). Oil on canvas. 88.9 x 68.6 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY.

After the J. Paul Getty Museum, "The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme" travels to the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (October 18, 2010-January 23, 2011) and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid (March 22- June 12, 2011).



Source
Morton, Mary and Scott Allen (eds.), et al. Rediscovering Gérôme. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010. 

http://artmuseumjournal.com/jean_leon_gerome.aspx

This is Art definetely, and almost visual.

During one of my drives home, I switched the radio to the CBC radio2 station - one of my favorite listening spots. My car got instantly filled with a charming atmosphere of pulsating, living music fabric, almost picturesque with its sound.

The Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra is one of those albums that experiments with easy listening, and is on the verge of making you tap your foot to the subtle rhythm. To call it oriental would be to undermine its complexity, to call it oldies would be to understate its variation, and to name it after any genre than itself would be to disregard its very being.

Composed by Andy McNeill, and with the association of an odd group of individuals, The Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra is truly worth a listen to.

So, what are you waiting for? Go http://www.mmstorchestra.com listen mp3 and order your CD. I already have it in my collection.

Julie Heffernan's Self-Portrait

The “Self-Portrait” is not only the woman centered in the picture plane but the entire canvas. Each of Heffernan’s paintings is compulsively constructed like that of a surreal automatic drawing, rendering a multiplicity of images like journal entries: the fruit canopies, knotted forests, ghostly wallpaper and vignettes encased in thought bubbles that float around the figure’s head. At the very least, her “self” extends to the canvas edge; at most, it cannot be contained. The amount of detail poured into each painting nearly overflows with life, and invites you in.

Her paintings are a constant dilemma of opposites between - the gorgeous and grotesque, attraction and repulsion. The series Booty amasses the spoils of war. It presents us with a bounty of enormous amounts of both wealth and waste of resources, energy and lives. Yet, the figure does not stoop under the weight of it all, but holds
herself upright among the surrounding foe, heavy ornaments and animal corpses with the most extraordinary grace.

Like the Old Masters that her work evokes, Julie Heffernan’s paintings give us a lot to look at, a wealth of sheer visual entertainment. Burnished with a pearly gloss concocted from a unique recipe of intelligence, fairy tale, art history and high fashion, each image engages us for a long time, and compels us to move closer, then further away , then closer again – as opposed to those paintings that we feel we know perfectly well, or well enough, from across the room.
-Francine Prose


Julie Heffernan, "Self Portrait as Booty" 2007, Oil on canvas, 68 1/2 x 65 inches

Julie Heffernan was born in 1956 and received her MFA from Yale University.
She has had numerous one-person exhibitions around the country and has shown
internationally. She has received a Lila Acheson Wallace award, NY Foundation for the Arts award, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright-Hayes Grant.

Image is courtesy of P.P.O.W. Gallery