The Guggenheim exhibition catalogue Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe has won the 2008 George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award, which recognizes outstanding publications in visual arts and architecture.

Established by the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) in 1980, the annual award honors the memory of George Wittenborn (1905–1974), a New York art book dealer and publisher who was a strong supporter of ARLIS/NA. Eligible titles are evaluated in the categories of content, documentation, layout, format, and overall aesthetic quality.

Published on the occasion of a comprehensive exhibition of work by the Chinese-born artist Cai Guo-Qiang, organized by Thomas Krens and Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Guggenheim Museum, the book includes essays by Wang Hui, David Joselit, Miwon Kwon, and Sandhini Poddar. Designed by Miko McGinty and Rita Jules, the catalogue features over 230 illustrations and offers a comprehensive history and interpretation of Cai’s art, as well as an extensive chronology, exhibition history, and bibliography.

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The Mayor of Linz, Franz Dobusch, announced yesterday that the town will return the painting titled, Portrait of a Woman (Ria Munk) made by Gustav Klimt to the descendants of a Jewish family who were robbed of it by the Nazis.

An independent expert has confirmed the painting was seized from Mrs Munk by the Nazis after she was deported to a concentration camp where she died in 1941.

Family lawyer Alfred Noll applied in 2007 for the return of the painting, which made its way into Linz's collection from an art dealer after the Second World War.

Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Art Nouveau (Vienna Secession) movement. His major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects, many of which are on display in the Vienna Secession gallery. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism--nowhere is this more apparent than in his numerous drawings in pencil.

Klimt became one of the founding members and president of the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) in 1897 and of the group's periodical Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring). He remained with the Secession until 1908. The group's goals were to provide exhibitions for unconventional young artists, to bring the best foreign artists' works to Vienna, and to publish its own magazine to showcase members' work. The group declared no manifesto and did not set out to encourage any particular style -- Naturalists, Realists, and Symbolists all coexisted. The government supported their efforts and gave them a lease on public land to erect an exhibition hall. The group's symbol was Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of just causes, wisdom, and the arts -- and Klimt painted his radical version in 1898.

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Once again we talk with the artists of meseon community. Today, we know more about Ione Citrin (Personal Website) and her artworks. Enjoy it!!

Ione Citrin:
"Society has affected my psyche, so everything I create is from a direct result of being alive and living in two centuries in the USA with a particular familial situation, ... "

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Emmanuel Di-Donna, Vice Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art Worldwide and Head of Sotheby’s Evening Sales, New York, commented, “This group of paintings, all from Lempicka’s prime period, embodies the spirit of the Art Deco era and its sense of style and modernity. These iconic images range from intimate and sensual to bold and monumental. As an artist, 2 Lempicka drew on the avant-garde art and design around her, Cubism in particular, to derive a distinct aesthetic all her own.”

Continue reading "Important Works by Tamara de Lempicka From the Collection of Wolfgang Joop To be sold at Sotheby’s in New York" »

Once again we talk with the artists of meseon community. Today, we know more about William Coronado and his artwork. Enjoy it!!

William Coronado:
"Art is a necessity, ritual, and process to communicate ideas both conscious and subconscious about an individual’s existences and struggle in relation to their external environment.  This struggle can be one of reconciliation, rejection, acceptance, or denial of the external sources in which the individual is forced to be part of such as society and its system of operation."

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