FROM THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE TO MODERN GREECE
AGGreen
Hellenic Art in Adversity, 1453 - 1830* New York, Onassis Cultural Center
New York
15/12/2005 - 6/5/2006
This exhibition focuses on a period of Greek Civilisation mostly unknown to
the wider public, in contrast with the international renown of Ancient Greek
art and the ever-increasing interest in the Byzantine art of Greece in the
middle ages. Over 137 treasures from the Post-Byzantine collections of the
Benaki Museum will be on display, including representative samples from all
sectors of artistic and intellectual endeavour - icons, paintings, wood
carving, silversmith works, embroidery, clothing, jewellery, ceramics, stone
reliefs, rare book editions, maps, weapons and heirlooms - composing a
panorama of Greek art from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the
establishment of the new Greek State in 1830.The objects were selected
because of their individual beauty, but also to highlight the high level of
culture in the Greek world during an era that was not at all conducive to a
flourishing cultural life.
The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue, which the
Onassis Foundation has undertaken to publish.
*Organization:
*Benaki Museum, Onassis Affiliated Public Benefit Foundation
http://www.benaki.gr/exhibitions/en/
vjp...@at.biostrategist.dot.dot.com
BTW, the museum is in the basement of Olympic
Tower which Onasis built in Rockefeller Center.
Recently the museum has been used as a meeting
hall by a lot of Greek groups.
It kinda makes up for the fact that when
they built thecathedral.goarch.org they
didn't take advantage of midtown as
they could have.
- = -
Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Columbia'81+, Bio$trategist
BachMozart ReaganQuayle EvrytanoKastorian
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
Pataki+JebBush in 2008!
Bbd
Will the exhibition be touring after May 2006?
vjp...@at.biostrategist.dot.dot.com
BTW, there's also an exhibit in NYC's Guggenheim "RUSSIA!"
Bbd
vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:
> BTW, there's also an exhibit in NYC's Guggenheim "RUSSIA!"
>
>
I thought the Guggenheim was a museum of contemporary art.
vjp...@at.biostrategist.dot.dot.com
Featuring More Than 275 of the Greatest Masterworks of Russian Art,
from the Thirteenth Century to the Present, Many Traveling for the
First Time Outside Russia
Exhibition: RUSSIA! Dates: September 16, 2005-January 11, 2006
(NEW YORK, NY-September 15, 2005) The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
presents RUSSIA!, the most comprehensive exhibition of Russian art
ever shown in the United States, from September 16, 2005 through
January 11, 2006. With more than 275 objects, this innovative
exhibition features the greatest masterworks of Russian art from the
thirteenth century to the present, including icons; portraiture in
both painting and sculpture from the eighteenth through the twentieth
centuries; critical realism in the nineteenth century as well as
socialist realism of the communist era; landscapes through the
centuries; pioneering abstraction; and experimental contemporary
art--many of these works will be seen for the first time outside of
Russia. The exhibition also features a selection of first-class
Western European paintings and sculptures from the imperial art
collections assembled by Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and
Nicholas I in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and later in
the early twentieth century by the Moscow merchants Sergei Shchukin
and Ivan Morozov. These works testify simultaneously to the
perspicacity and daring of Russian art collectors, the discernible
influence of these outstanding collections on the development of
Russian art, and the special relationship between Russia and the West.
This exhibition has been realized under the patronage of Vladimir
Putin, President of the Russian Federation..
A significant number of the selected artworks have either rarely or
never traveled abroad, notably: icons by the fifteenth-century painter
Andrei Rublev and the sixteenth-century painter Dionysii; Ivan
Aivazovskys epic seascape The Ninth Wave (1850); Vasilii Perovs
introspective portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1872); Ilya Repins iconic
Bargehaulers on the Volga (1870-73); Mikhail Vrubels haunting
Symbolist masterpiece Lilacs (1900); and Kazimir Malevichs Black
Square (ca. 1930), from the Hermitage. The works will be on loan from
Russias greatest museums--the State Russian Museum, the State
Tretyakov Gallery, the State Hermitage Museum, and the Kremlin
Museum--as well as regional museums, private collections, and a select
number of museums and private collections outside of Russia.
According to Thomas Krens, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation,
"This exhibition will serve as a unique opportunity to introduce the
international public to the most valued artistic treasures culled from
Russias greatest museums. RUSSIA! is in keeping with the Guggenheims
distinguished history of presenting groundbreaking exhibitions of
Russian art, including Art of the Avant-Garde in Russia: Selections
from the George Costakis Collection (1981), The Great Utopia: The
Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932 (1992), Amazons of the
Avant-Garde (2000), and Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism (2003).
Undoubtedly, an exhibition of this scope and reach will not be
repeated in this generation.".
most famous icon painters, Andrei Rublev and Dionysii, as well one of
the most revered icons, the Virgin of Vladimir of 1514. These icons
will demonstrate how Russian artists absorbed and relied upon the
Byzantine model, even as they transformed it and created their own
style and artistic language.
The second and third sections will be devoted to the imperial art
collections of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and
Russian art of the eighteenth century, respectively. In artistic
terms, the eighteenth century marks the birth of secular Russian art;
it is the period when Peter the Great (1672-1725; tsar from 1682 to
1725) founded his window on the West, St. Petersburg, and instigated a
series of reforms that diminished the dominance of the Russian
Orthodox Church and its traditions, including icon painting. A
generation later, Peter the Greats granddaughter-in-law Catherine the
Great (1729-1796, tsarina from 1762 to 1796) assembled a first-rate
collection of Western paintings in her Hermitage and supported the
development of an academic system for art based on the Western
European model, including stipends for the best students of the
Academy of Art to study abroad in Italy. Exposed to the European
tradition through various means, Russian artists including the painter
Dmitrii Levitski and the sculptor Fedot Shubin produced stunning
official portraiture of both the imperial family and the nobility,
thereby capturing their time, the age of Catherine, as brilliantly and
richly as their contemporaries in Western Europe such as Joshua
Reynolds and Jean-Antoine Houdon. And on the cusp of the nineteenth
century, artists such as Fedor Alekseev produced breathtaking
landscape paintings of Moscow and St. Petersburg.