Every Picture Has a Story

By Tom Teicholz

For 30 years, Michael Schwartz has owned and operated Galerie Michael, an art gallery on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, building, in his own words, “museum-quality collections, one work at a time.” Works by Picasso, Dali, Goya and Miró adorn the walls for the current exhibition on Spanish masters.

With a staff of 24, many of whom hold fine-arts degrees and are called curators, Schwartz would be happy to sell you a work of art. But he would prefer to tell you a story first because what Schwartz really wants to do is enchant you.

I’ve known a few art dealers in my time, and much the way poker players have a tell, dealers have a “sell.” Some dealers sell status and exclusivity — as if you are joining a club; others make a more mercenary pitch, appealing to one’s sense of value, investment savvy and greed; for others, the sell is more aesthetic, with a focus on the artist’s technique, or on occasion

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Dali Opera in Madrid

MADRID. An opera based on the life of Salvador Dalí and his wife Gala has finally been previewed in Madrid, seven years after its planned debut. “Yo, Dalí” (I, Dalí) opened at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in June. It will premiere at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona in October.

The four-act opera retells significant moments in the artist’s life, with its main theme being his relationship with his wife, whom he met in Paris in 1929. The opera also encompasses ...
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Spanish Masters Opening Images

Spanish Master Museum Exhibitions

Pablo Picasso

Current museum shows

• Kunstmuseum Picasso, Münster, through July 3, 2011, Dans la frénésie de la couleur: Les linogravures de Picasso / Im Rausch der Farbe: Picassos Linolschnitte

• Wolfenbüttel Museum, Germany, through July 3, 2011, Pablo Picasso: Malerbücher aud dem Kabinett der Herzog August Bibliothek

• Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, through July 17, 2011, Picasso, Miro, Dali, Angry Young Men: The Birth of Modernity

• Museum Lindau, Germany, through August 20, 2011, Pablo Picasso, Meisterzeichnungen eines Jahrhundertgenies

• Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX, through August 21, 2011, Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910-1912, co-organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art

• SFMOMA, San Francisco, through September 9, 2011, Les Stein ou l‘invention de l’art moderne

• Museo Picasso, Malaga, through September15, 2011, Picasso and his work under the objective of David Douglas Duncan

• Musée Granet, Aix-En-Provence, though October 2, 2011, La collection Planque

• Musée Picasso, Antibes, French Rivera, through December 31, 2012, Picasso and Friends

• de Young Museum, San Francisco, June 11 – October 9, 2011, Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris

• National Museum of History, Taipei City, Taiwan, June 18 – September 18, 2011, Masterpieces form the Musée National Picasso – Paris

Upcoming museum shows

• Museo Picasso, Barcelona, July 1 – October 16, 2011, Feasting on Paris, co-organized by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

• Santa Barbara Museum of Art, September 19, 2011 – January 2, 2012, Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910-1912
• Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany, September 25, 2011 – January 15, 2012, Picasso 1905 à Paris

• Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, October 3, 2011 – January 16, 2012, Césaire, Lam, Picasso

• Kunstmuseum Picasso, Münster, October 15, 2011 – January 15, 2012, Picasso and his work under the objective of David Douglas Duncan

• High Museum of Art, Atlanta, October 15, 2011 – April 29, 2012, Picasso to Warhol

• Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sidney, October 28, 2011 – February 2, 2012, Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris

• The Getty Villa, Malibu, November 2 , 2011 – January 16, 2012, Modern Antiquity: Picasso, de Chirico, Leger and Picabia in the Presence of the Antique

• Musée Picasso, Antibes, French Rivera, February 16 - May 20, 2012, Modern Antiquity: Picasso, de Chirico, Leger and Picabia in the Presence of the Antique

• Tate Britain, London, February 15 – July 15, 2012, Picasso in Britain

• The Frick Collection, New York, March 1 – May 31, 2012, Picasso: Reinventing Tradition 1890 to 1921

• Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, March 30, 2012 – July 15, 2013, Women, Picasso, Beckman, De Kooning

• Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, June 11 – September 3, 2012, Modern Antiquity: Picasso, de Chirico, Leger and Picabia in the Presence of the Antique

• Scottish National Museum of Modern Art, Edinburgh, August 6 – November 4, 2012, Picasso in Britain

• Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 5, 2012 – January 23, 2013, Picasso Black and White

Salvador Dali

Current museum shows

• Art & Science Museum Singapore, May 14 – October 30, 2011, Dali: Mind of a Genius

Upcoming museum shows

• Haggin Museum, Stockton, CA, July 21 – September 25, 2011, Dali Illustrates Dante’s Divine Comedy

• Fondation Beyeler, Basel, October 2, 2011 – January 29, 2012, Dali, Magritte, Miro: Surrealism in Paris

Joan Miro

Current museum shows

• Tate Modern, London, April 14 – September 11, 2011, Miró

• Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, March 25, 2011 – April 15, 2012, Spotlight on the Collection – Artists in Depth: Arp, Miro, Calder

Upcoming museum shows

• Fondation Beyeler, Basel, October 2, 2011 – January 29, 2012, Dali, Magritte, Miro: Surrealism in Paris

• Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, October 13, 2011 – March 25, 2012, Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape, co-organized by Tate Modern

• National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC., May 6 – August 12, 2012, Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape

Francisco de Goya

Current museum shows

• Museo del Prado, Madrid, through July 31, No solo Goya

• Williams College Museum of Art, June 11 – October 2, 2011, Masters of the Modern: The gift of Madeleine P. and Harvey R. Plonsker, Class of 1961, group show

Upcoming museum shows

• Nassau Country Museum, Roslyn Harbor, NY, September 17 – November 27, 2011, Francisco de Goya: Los Caprichos

• The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, September 11 – November 27, 2011, Acid on Metal: The Art of Etching and Aquatint, group show

• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, September 13, 2011 – March 4, 2012, Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine, group show

• Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, October 18, 2011 – January 8, 2012, Winter Tales: Depictions of Winter in European Art from Bruegel to Beuys, group show

Cryptic: The Use of Allegory in Contemporary Art with a Master Class from Goya

Cryptic: The Use of Allegory in Contemporary Art with a Master Class from Goya May 20–August 14, 2011
Summer 2011 Exhibition at The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
3750 Washington Boulevard
St. Louis, MO 63108

The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition called Cryptic: The Use of Allegory in Contemporary Art, with a Master Class from Goya. This exhibition will feature the work of six contemporary artists—Folkert de Jong, Hiraki Sawa, Allison Schulnik, Dana Schutz, Javier Tellez, and Erika Wanenmacher—paired with works by Spanish master Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes. Organized by CAM and curated by Santa Fe-based independent curator Laura Steward, the exhibition will run from May 20 through August 14, 2011, and be accompanied by a CAM-produced publication and series of diverse public programs.

Cryptic explores the way contemporary artists make use of allegory—a figurative mode of representation conveying meaning other than the literal—in a wide variety of media. The juxtaposition of recent works with examples from two series of prints by Goya, the Caprichos and the Disparates (also known as the Proverbs), is intended to prompt consideration of how artists over the years have "encrypted" difficult, uncomfortable, and often socio-politically loaded meanings within allegory and continue to do so in the present day. Particularly in light of recent global events, this exhibition offers a timely exploration of the role that contemporary artists play as commentators on the world around us.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828) created masterpieces in painting in the 18th and 19th centuries, and is recognized today as both the last of the great old masters and the first "modern" artist. He is celebrated variously for work ranging from disturbingly unflinching depictions of the horrors and tragedies of the Napoleonic wars to the wildly imaginative and richly allegorical engravings featured in Cryptic.

Folkert de Jong (Dutch, b. 1972) is best-known for large-scale figurative sculptures rendered in polyurethane foam and paint that offer a biting, yet coded, critique of social mores, war, and religion in a manner not dissimilar to Goya's work made 200 years prior.

The video works of Hiraki Sawa (Japanese, b. 1977) have the quality of a daydream, infusing everyday scenes with uncanny, magical traces that prompt viewers to consider the numerous poetic meanings of quotidian phenomena. In Trail (2004), for example, silhouettes of exotic animals and even a Ferris wheel infiltrate non-descript domestic interiors such as bathroom sinks and window sills as an allegory for the extraordinary things that might underpin seemingly ordinary situations.

Allison Schulnik's (American, b. 1978) strange, agitated paintings reflect her background in animation, but privilege the sculptural aspect of paint through their densely impastoed surfaces. Her gothic, figurative works, such as a bizarre and mesmeric still-life with flowers—a classic symbol of the fleetingness of life—suggest the more sinister and foreboding aspects of contemporary life.

Dana Schutz (American, b. 1976) is one of the leading figurative painters to emerge in the past decade, and is represented in this exhibition with various works, including one of the "Self-Eaters" of the mid-2000s. She has described these works as allegories of self-sufficiency, particularly in painting itself.

Javier Tellez's (Venezuelan, b. 1969) video Letter from the Blind for the Use of Those Who See (2007) recalls the ancient Indian allegory of six blind men variously describing an elephant by filming six actual blind New Yorkers as they encounter a live elephant for the first time. Tellez turns the typical reading of the old allegory—that a single point of view is insufficient to understand something—on its head, and reveals instead the value and complexity of an individual experience.

Finally, Erika Wanenmacher (American, b. 1955) makes a sincere use of witchcraft in works across various media. Like many artists throughout history, she uses allegory in a metaphysical sense, prompting consideration of the way art offers an understanding of the world that transcends the logical, the physical, and the material.

Interestingly enough this is exactly what Salvador Dali did when he created his version of Goya's Los Caprichios, both series available at Galerie Michael for amazing values.

Original Blog: http: 2 buildings 1 blog

Dali: St. George and the Dragon

Dali, Salvador
St. George and the Dragon,1947
Etching
17 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches

The most famous legend of Saint George is of him slaying a dragon. In the Middle Ages the dragon was commonly used to represent the Devil. The slaying of the dragon by St George was first credited to him in the twelfth century, long after his death. It is therefore likely that the many stories connected with St George's name are fictitious.

There are many versions of story of St George slaying the dragon, but most agree on the following:

A town was terrorized by a dragon A young princess was offered to the dragon and when George heard about this he rode into the village, slayed the dragon and rescued the princess.

The Legend of St. George and the Dragon

St. George travelled for many months by land and sea until he came to Libya. Here he met a poor hermit who told him that everyone in that land was in great distress, for a dragon had long ravaged the country.

'Every day,' said the old man, 'he demands the sacrifice of a beautiful maiden and now all the young girls have been killed. The king's daughter alone remains, and unless we can find a knight who can slay the dragon she will be sacrificed tomorrow. The king of Egypt will give his daughter in marriage to the champion who overcomes this terrible monster.'

When St. George heard this story, he was determined to try and save the princess, so he rested that night in the hermit's hut, and at daybreak set out to the valley where the dragon lived. When he drew near he saw a little procession of women, headed by a beautiful girl dressed in pure Arabian silk. The princess Sabra was being led by her attendants to the place of death. The knight spurred his horse and overtook the ladies. He comforted them with brave words and persuaded the princess to return to the palace. Then he entered the valley.

As soon as the dragon saw him it rushed from its cave, roaring with a sound louder than thunder. Its head was immense and its tail fifty feet long. But St. George was not afraid. He struck the monster with his spear, hoping he would wound it.

The dragon's scales were so hard that the spear broke into a thousand pieces. and St. George fell from his horse. Fortunately he rolled under an enchanted orange tree against which poison could not prevail, so that the venomous dragon was unable to hurt him. Within a few minutes he had recovered his strength and was able to fight again.

He smote the beast with his sword but the dragon poured poison on him and his armor split in two. Once more he refreshed himself from the orange tree and then, with his sword in his hand, he rushed at the dragon and pierced it under the wing where there were no scales, so that it fell dead at his feet.