National Gallery, London, Presents Work, Rest & Play

Canaletto, Venice: A Regatta on the Grand Canal, about 1735 The National Gallery, London.

LONDON.-The National Gallery, London, presents Work, Rest & Play, on view through 14 October 2007 at the Sunley Room. Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Northern Rock Foundation, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and in London by The Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation.

Artists have always been interested in the ways that we live. This exhibition explores the themes of work, rest and play as they have been depicted in art.

Bringing together exhibits dating from the 16th century to the present, it traces changing ideas about work and leisure, and looks at how artists have responded to major shifts in working patterns, from industrialisation to contemporary office culture.

This exhibition includes major works from the National Gallery, together with important historical and contemporary loans from other collections. It features works by Moroni, Canaletto, Gainsborough, Manet, Monet, Gauguin and Lowry.

This is one of a series of exhibitions organised in partnership with Bristol's Museums Galleries & Archives Service and the Tyne and Wear Museums.

The National Gallery Touring Partnership (2006-2008) is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Northern Rock Foundation and the Esm. Fairbairn Foundation.

Milwaukee Art Museum Features Adolph Gottlieb

Adolph Gottlieb, Untitled, ca. 1945. Unique hand-colored etching on laid paper. C. Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY, NY. AEGF#4651P.

MILWAUKEE, WI.- Adolph Gottlieb: Early Prints, on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum through August 19, 2007, is a rare opportunity to view the graphic work by an important Abstract Expressionist artist. Though small in scale, the prints provide an intimate view into the artist's creative process at the crucial moment in the development of his style, and in the evolution of Abstract Expressionism.

Gottlieb and the Abstract Expressionists, a dynamic group of artists based in New York City in the 1940s, used diverse imagery and styles while sharing a commitment to spontaneity and the subconscious. Long known for their evocative paintings, and with their emphasis on creating unique statements, very few Abstract Expressionists worked in the graphic media. The printed work of these artists has only recently become the subject of research.

The exhibition features all forty of the images the artist is known to have created from 1933 to 1947/48, the first phase of Gottlieb?s printmaking career. These works show the artist's use of etching as creative means to explore both the abstract and the iconic imagery. Working on a second-hand press he erected in his kitchen, Gottlieb began to explore new symbols in grid-like forms in the early 1930s. Like some of his Abstract Expressionist colleagues, Gottlieb was interested in an art that would be comprehensible to all viewers. During this thirteen-year period, Gottlieb's influence extended beyond his personal work, as he founded two influential artist groups entitled Ten (1935) and New York Artist Painters (1943.) Artists such as Mark Rothko, John Graham and George Constant were among the members of these two groups.

Drawing on the work of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung and his notion of the collective unconscious, Gottlieb created timeless images. These compositions include such primal elements as earth, water, humans, and animals. He sought a universal visual language of invented symbols that were meant to evoke ancient signs and symbols drawn from, for example, American Indian and Pre-Columbian mythical symbols. He used the term Pictograph as a label for these compositions in order to highlight their differences from standard Western painting and drawing. These self-described Pictographs began to appear in 1941. The works would help shape the modern American psyche in the artwork of postwar America. However, Gottlieb worked in very small editions often just a single proof or an edition of ten and had little motive to sell his prints thus making his early graphic work exceedingly rare.

Adolph Gottlieb: Early Prints was organized by the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc. In Milwaukee Mary Weaver Chapin, assistant curator of prints and drawings, coordinated the exhibition.

Kendell Geers - Irrespektiv at S.M.A.K.

Kendell Geers - Akropolis Now, 2004.

GHENT, BELGIUM.- Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst presents Kendell Geers Irrespektiv, on view through August 26, 2007. The South African artist Kendell Geers (b. 1968) does not have a great respect for the art establishment. For the Crap Shoot exhibition he had the curator Rudi Fuchs shadowed by a private detective for a week. In Glasgow he blew up one of the museum walls. Somewhere else he masturbated over a Hustler, framed the result, and hung the 'painting' in a museum. In the Palazzo Grassi he urinated in Duchamps urinal. He is consequently constantly involved in depicting evil in highly individual art forms that explore the boundaries of what is permissible.

As far as Geers is concerned it is not the work of art itself that is important but the message behind it. The main reason he creates 'art' is to undermine the establishment. Kendell Geers does not consider himself an artist or an activist. He is not an artist because he doesn't give a damn about art, and is not an activist because in his view an activist does not fit into today's world. Geers does not believe in a Utopia, but is more interested in a dystopia.

He sees freedom as the ability to speak for oneself, to define oneself and to be able to represent oneself in a way that meets one's own needs and experiences rather than those of others, namely those of the media and consumer society.

Supported by Allen & Overy: Allen & Overy LLP is an international legal practice serving companies, banks and public entities from offices in 24 major cities worldwide. 'Justice for all' is our approach to pro bono work and sponsoring activities. Allen & Overy LLP is proud to support this thought-provoking Kendell Geers exhibition.