SCHAUMBURG, Ill., Oct. 26, 2011 /CHICAGOPRESSRELEASE.COM/ — Get ready to fill up on popcorn, candy, soda and entertainment at the 12th Annual ARTimation Digital Arts Festival presented by The Illinois Institute of Art – Schaumburg. The college’s annual juried showcase of top student work in digital filmmaking, animation and visual effects has become a Halloween week tradition over the last decade. This year’s ARTimation will be held at AMC South Barrington 30, 175 Studio Dr. in South Barrington, on Wednesday, Oct. 26 with screenings at 5 p.m., 6 p.m., 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Tickets for the event are complimentary.

This year’s show contains 46 pieces created by 32 students from The Illinois Institute of Art – Schaumburg. Judges are industry professionals from Digital Kitchen, Cartoon Network, AREA 51, Backflip Studios, Leviathan, Threadless and Killer Minnow. They will receive reels in advance to judge the student work and will come in from around the country for the awards presentation and ARTimation Festival. Three of this year’s judges are graduates of The Illinois institute of Art – Schaumburg.

“We are so thrilled to give our students the opportunity to showcase their best work at this festival,” said Jeremy Schulz, ARTimation Festival chair and digital filmmaking instructor at The Illinois Institute of Art – Schaumburg. “Participating in a juried show gives our students real-world experience and gives our community a chance to see the kind of talent we have right here in the Northwest suburbs.”

Attendees can pick up tickets to ARTimation at the AMC South Barrington 30 box office starting at 4 p.m. on Oct. 26.

About The Illinois Institute of Art – Schaumburg

The Illinois Institute of Art – Schaumburg, a branch of The Illinois Institute of Art, is one of The Art Institutes (www.artinstitutes.edu), a system of over 45 education institutions located throughout North America. Programs, credential levels, technology, and scheduling options vary by school. Several institutions included in The Art Institutes system are campuses of South University. Administrative office: 210 Sixth Avenue, 33rd Floor, Pittsburgh, PA 15222 ©2011 The Art Institutes International LLC.  See aiprograms.info for program duration, tuition, fees, and other costs, median debt, federal salary data, alumni success, and other important info.

SOURCE Illinois Institute of Art – Schaumburg

http://www.artinstitutes.edu

Student Filmmakers and Animators to Showcase Top Work at 12th Annual ARTimation Festival | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

CHICAGO, Sept. 27, 2011 /CHICAGOPRESSRELEASE.COM/ — Studio One Eleven, the design division of Berlin Packaging, announced today that it was selected to contribute spray can concepts for the CANceptual v.4 graffiti art exhibit running through October 2 at Crewest Gallery in Los Angeles. Studio One Eleven collaborated with prominent graffiti artist Man One to explore new packaging approaches that will increase spray can comfort and nozzle control, enabling street artists to advance their craft as well as expand their creative palette for brand communications.

“Paint the Future,” the Studio One Eleven portion of the exhibit, consists of multiple spray can concepts that address two key questions:

• What would spray paint media look like if graffiti artists designed their own cans?
• What would paint manufacturers create if they consulted with professional graffiti artists as Nike does with Michael Jordan for basketball shoes?

Studio One Eleven’s design solution include new forms, interchangeable nozzles and features to reduce hand fatigue as well as allow artists to control factors such as paint flow speed, width and pattern. Other Studio One Eleven entries offer whimsical can form factors that showcase the creativity that has garnered multiple awards for the Berlin Packaging design studio.

The CANceptual v.4 exhibit also spotlights nearly 70 urban artists who have created contemporary works of art using a spray can as their canvas. Now in its fourth year, the show was inspired by Man One’s work in designing graffiti art for brands and marketing communication agencies targeting youth-oriented markets. Man One Design’s client roster ranges from Adidas, CarMax and Coke to Disney, EA Sports, MTV, Smirnoff, Timberland and many others.

“One of our strengths lies in understanding and implementing experiential design – that is, how people actually use and interact with a package. Man One Design asked us to apply that expertise to provide a vision for paint delivery systems that suit the needs of street artists,” said Scott Jost, Berlin Packaging Vice President of Innovation and Design. “These ideas open a dialogue that can help pave the way for equipping graffiti artists with better tools.”

“Street art is becoming an increasingly popular vehicle for brands to connect with younger consumers, but artists are limited by the capabilities of the conventional spray can. We asked Studio One Eleven to take an exploratory journey with us to think differently about the spray can and suggest ways to improve can performance,” said Scott Power, Managing Principal, Man One Design. “Our goal with the ‘Paint the Future’ showcase is to inspire and facilitate packaging innovation by asking a professional artist and heavy utilizer of spray paint like Man One what he wants and needs from a spray can to create his artwork. This is a path to discover new and meaningful value that translates into strategic opportunities for paint manufacturers.”

About Berlin Packaging

Berlin Packaging is North America’s premier Hybrid Packaging Supplier of plastic, glass, and metal containers and closures. With over 33,000 available SKUs, over 100 packaging consultants, and more than 80 sales and warehouse locations across North America, the company has the right products, expertise, and geographic proximity to help customers increase their net income through packaging products and services. Berlin Packaging supplies billions of containers and closures annually as well as warehousing and logistics services for customers of all sizes in all industries. It is the only company in its sector to be ISO 9001 certified, to have Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) certification, and to achieve 99% on-time delivery of its shipments every month for seven years. Related services and specialty product divisions include Studio One Eleven custom packaging and graphic design, Berlin Global sourcing solutions, E3 profit-oriented consulting, Berlin Financial financing for equipment and capital improvements, Dangerous Goods transport, Freund Container & Supply convenience, and Qorpak laboratory supplies. The company can be reached at 1-800-2-BERLIN, www.BerlinPackaging.com, and on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

About Man One Design

Man One Design is a purveyor of world-class graffiti art and design, creating urban contemporary artifacts and cultural experiences. The firm has consulted with business executives and politicians, designed art installations and painted murals, imagined new brands and products, developed television shows and videos, produced advertising and events, and helped clients ranging from Coca-Cola to Microsoft and Walt Disney. Man One Design’s client work has been accepted into the Smithsonian Institute. To learn more, visit www.manonedesign.com.  

SOURCE Berlin Packaging

http://www.berlinpackaging.com
http://www.manonedesign.com

Berlin Packaging’s Studio One Eleven Participates in Avant Garde Art Show | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Ravenswood ArtWalk will feature more than 200 artists, working in various mediums, along the Ravenswood corridor between Addison and Lawrence and adjacent areas. A map will guide visitors to all venues.

New this year! The RAW Street Fair will be located at Ravenswood and Montrose and features two days of live music, children’s art activities, art tents, food and beverages.

There will be a rooftop lounge and sculpture garden, film screenings, lectures and live performances throughout the weekend. A free trolley, with guided historical tour by a member of the Ravenswood – Lake View Historical Association, will transport visitors from one end of the event to the other. There is something for everyone at ArtWalk!

In a partnership with Chicago Artists Month and with the generous support of many local businesses, Alderman Pawar and Goose Island Brewery, the always-free ArtWalk is easily accessed from the Montrose, Irving Park or Addison bus and Brown line stops.

More information can be found on Facebook or the Ravenswood ArtWalk website: www.RavenswoodArtwalk.org

Interested in being a volunteer? Contact Mason at: info@ravenswoodartwalk.org.

Ravenswood ArtWalk Celebrates 10 Years – October 1 & 2 | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Garofalo was nationally known for designing innovative houses. His design for the home of art patrons Lewis and Susan Manilow was featured on the cover of Metropolis magazine in November 2004.

He also was known for his work on unique public buildings such as the Korean Presbyterian Church of New York, designed with Greg Lynn and considered the first building conceived and executed entirely through digital media; and the Hyde Park Art Center, for which he received awards from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.

Garofalo collaborated with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill on design planning for Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid, and with UNStudio on the Burnham Pavilion, a temporary structure that housed a video and light display on Chicago history in Millennium Park in 2009.

The Art Institute of Chicago presented a solo retrospective of Garofalo’s work in 2006. In 2009, he was one of only 50 artists across all genres nationally to receive a prestigious United States Artists fellowship. The following year, UIC named him a University Scholar, an honor that awards three-year grants to faculty members for superior research, teaching, and promise of future achievements.

Former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley named Garofalo to the Mayor’s Design Initiative, an advisory committee of leaders in design and construction. Garofalo served on the board of trustees of the Graham Foundation for the Advancement of Architecture and the Arts and on the advisory board of the design laboratory Archeworks.

“Doug was an important voice on the campus strategic planning committee, participated in the annual Daley Forum, and served brilliantly as interim director of the School of Architecture from 2001 to 2003,” said Judith Russi Kirshner, dean of the UIC College of Architecture and the Arts.

Garofalo received his master of architecture degree from Yale University and his bachelor of architecture degree from the University of Notre Dame. Early in his career, he received Young Architect awards from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Architectural League of New York, and a citation from Progressive Architecture magazine. Architectural Record magazine named him among its Design Vanguard 2000.

“As a colleague and friend, he is remembered fondly and widely for his sharp eye and wry smile, honest criticism and warm encouragement,” Robert Somol, director of the UIC School of Architecture, wrote in a message to the Chicago architecture community. “Things that came naturally to Doug will continue to remain mysteries for the rest of us.”

The UIC College of Architecture and the Arts plans to establish a fellowship in Garofalo’s name.

NOTE: Photos for download at newsphoto.lib.uic.edu/v/Garofalo/

Architect Douglas Garofalo, 1958-2011 | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Major Art Institute Exhibition Showcases Revolutionary Moment in 20th Century Graphic and Industrial Design

Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life Features Artists and Designers Heartfield, Klutsis, Lissitzky, Sutnar, Teige, and Zwart Bringing “Art into Life”

Exhibition on View June 11-October 9, 2011

Beginning around 1910, a group of vanguard artists working in Europe advanced the radical idea that art had a mandate to transform daily life, from silverware to postage stamps to buildings.

This theory would eventually take hold in the wider world, where it merged enthusiastically with the demands of the industrial marketplace, the nascent mass media, and urban popular culture.

This vibrant and critically important moment in east-central European modernism is comprehensively explored in Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life–a major exhibition on view at the Art Institute of Chicago from June 11 through October 9, 2011, in the Modern Wing’s Abbott Galleries (G 182-184).

Focusing on six highly influential international artists–John Heartfield, Gustav Klutsis, El Lissitzky, Ladislav Sutnar, Karel Teige, and Piet Zwart –this exhibition features nearly 300 works from a landmark acquisition, including photography, photomontage, book and poster design, and household objects such as rare examples of porcelain and glassware. Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life is the first significant exhibition at the Art Institute to address any aspect of art east of Germany during the interwar decades.

The six artists featured in this exhibition shared a fervent belief that they could help restructure society by redesigning common or utilitarian items. Working in the 1920s and 1930s, specifically in central and eastern Europe, they were fully informed about the history of art and the state of the world around them, and they formed networks to circulate ideas for changing that world through creative interventions of all kinds in everyday life.

Books, prints, posters, table settings, postage stamps, illustrated magazines, clothing, exhibition installations, building proposals–these artists energetically and zealously reached into every conceivable creative domain. They traded ideas through the mail, sharing published journal essays and original works in photography and graphic design. Across the boundaries of media, disciplines, and nationalities, these avant-garde artists presciently set the stage for today’s modern communications and advertising industries.

Piet Zwart (Dutch, 1885-1977) and Ladislav Sutnar (Czech, later American, 1897-1976) both helped invent the position of industrial designer, creating brand identities for companies by applying principles of standardization, serial production, and eye-catching clarity to advertising and domestic products.

Zwart brought his minimalist aesthetic vision to ubiquitous items like biscuit boxes and postage stamps, while his compatriot Sutnar brought modernist “good design” to tableware, clothing, and children’s toys. Karel Teige (1900-1951), the leader of the Czech avant-garde, and the immensely influential Russian artist Lazar (El) Lissitzky (1890-1941) developed the language of Constructivism in typography, architecture, exhibition designs, and critical essays.

Teige produced brilliant book and journal designs while Lissitzky created some of the most exciting poster and exhibition designs of the 1920s and 1930s in Germany and Russia.

John Heartfield (1891-1968), a native German who took an English name, and Latvian-born Gustav Klutsis (1895-1938), who worked in Soviet Russia, mastered the persuasive rhetoric of word-image combinations in photomontage, creating posters and magazines that were seen by tens of thousands at the time. Heartfield worked exclusively in photomontage to design book covers, journals, and agitational posters for the Communist cause; Klutsis also pioneered using photomontage for political purposes.

The objects featured in Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life come almost entirely from a recent major acquisition by the Art Institute: the Robert and June Leibowits Collection. This acquisition is the largest undertaking by the Department of Photography in 12 years and the first acquisition ever to be shared by multiple curatorial departments in the museum (the departments of Prints and Drawings, Architecture and Design, and Photography) and the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries.

The Art Institute now has the second largest public holding in the United States of original issues of Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (1927-1936), the leftist propaganda weekly with photomontage designs by John Heartfield, and the greatest collection of Russian Futurist books outside of New York and Los Angeles. With this acquisition the museum has also significantly strengthened its collection of works of Soviet, Czech, Dutch, and German Constructivism.

A beautifully designed 160-page exhibition catalogue accompanies Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life. Edited by Matthew S. Witkovsky, curator of the exhibition and chair of the Department of Photography at the Art Institute, the book contains essays written by a team of specialists–Jared Ash, Maria Gough, Jindrich Toman, Nancy J. Troy, and Andrés Mario Zervigón–on these six artists and their attraction to the dynamic realm of “everyday life.” The catalogue is available for purchase in the Art Institute’s Museum Shop for $50.

Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and curated by Matthew S. Witkovsky, curator and chair of the Department of Photography. Major funding is provided by Robert and June Leibowits. Generous support is provided by the Exhibitions Trust: Goldman Sachs, Kenneth and Anne Griffin, Thomas and Margot Pritzker, the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation, Donna and Howard Stone, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Sullivan, and an anonymous donor.

The Art Institute of Chicago Hosts Snap: the Fourth Photography Benefit Gala 9/22/11

The Art Institute of Chicago’s Photography Department will host one of the most anticipated events of the year, Snap, in celebration of the major exhibition, Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life, on September 22, 2011. The event this year, co-chaired by Brenda Shapiro and Ikram and Josh Goldman , will raise funds for the Photography Gala Endowment for future acquisitions.

The evening’s sponsors are Harris Bank and Christie’s. For tickets or more information, please visit www.artic.edu/snap, call (312) 857-7640, or e-mail snapgala@artic.edu.

‘Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life’ Opens at the Art Institute June 11 | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Astronomer Royal Martin Rees will deliver the University of Chicago 2011 Brinson Lecture, titled “From Big Bang to Biospheres,” at 6 p.m. Monday, April 11 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The public is invited to this free event at the MacLean Ballroom, 112 S. Michigan Ave., which is co-sponsored by UChicago and SAIC with support from the Brinson Foundation. Serving as moderator will be Gabriel Spitzer, who covers science, health and the environment for WBEZ radio.

Advanced technology has enabled astronomers to trace cosmic history back to the big bang nearly 14 billion years ago, and begin to understand the emergence of atoms, galaxies, stars and planets, and how life developed a complex biosphere on Earth. In his illustrated lecture, Rees will discuss some of the new questions posed by these advances: What does the long-range future hold? How widespread is life in the cosmos? Is it surprising that physical laws permitted the emergence of complexity? And is physical reality even more extensive than what telescopes can probe?

Rees is master of Trinity College, Cambridge and former director of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and of the Royal Society. The author of eight books and many research publications, he has lectured widely in the United States, Europe and the Far East. His research interests include cosmology, galaxy formation, black holes and high-energy phenomena in the universe.

On April 6, Rees accepted the Templeton Prize, which is worth one million British pounds and awarded annually to a scholar or individual who has made “an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.” The Templeton Foundation noted that Rees, who says he has no religious beliefs, has made major contributions to “big questions” in cosmology that have scientific, philosophical and theological implications.

A foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and several other foreign academies, Rees also is a member of the United Kingdom’s House of Lords.

Astronomer Royal Martin Rees to lecture on mysteries of universe April 11 | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

She says:

As an ad agency art buyer for nine years, it was time for a new chapter and I am now a producer, available for print and video assignments.

I feel the background I have in advertising gives me a unique view, that varies from traditional producers. I have the insights into both agency and client concerns, understanding budget and timing from both perspectives.

I have built up an impressive list of vendors including video production houses, still photographers, location scouts, hair & make up artists etc. I hope to expand my freelance work in LA soon. http://lauraroeper.com/

The unique nature of the business also has allowed me time to do my own fine art, curate and work on my new blog, http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/permanent-canvas in conjuncton with ChicagoNow.

SOURCE

http://lauraroeper.com/

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/permanent-canvas/

Former Chicago art buyer Laura Roeper announces two new ventures | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

H2O Plus Introduces the Oasis Sea Sphere Hydrating Duo | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Photos and models of the ultra-modern Lincoln Park mansion designed by architect Avram Lothan is in the permanent collection of the Chicago Art Institute–and is currently for sale.

This 5 bedroom, 3.1 bath home located at 838 W. Webster Ave. is listed for $4.95 million.

The home includes 20 foot ceilings, glass walls, 2,400 square feet of outdoor space, an acoustics-friendly ceiling and more.

For information on this property check out the listing.

Check out photos of the home here, courtesy of VHT.

Originally reported by Huffington Post Chicago. Read the original story here.

PHOTOS: Contemporary Lincoln Park A Work Of Art…Literally | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Originally reported by WISH-TV News. Read the original article here.

Museum to host job fair for veterans | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

NEW YORK – In a clattery, uptown bistro, not far from the studio where he once watched his father paint bold abstract masterpieces, Earl Davis contemplates the greatest loss of his life.

Not his beloved father, Stuart Davis, who died in 1964 when Earl was 12. Nor his father’s work, which Davis, an only child, spent three decades trying to document, preserve and showcase. Even the loss of the millions of dollars that the paintings were worth — Davis’ inheritance, swindled from him in the cruelest fashion — is not what hurts the most.

The biggest loss, Davis says, was the love and friendship of the man he admired and adored, a man he trusted with everything — his confidences, his dreams, his father’s life’s work.

Even now, several years after the unraveling of one of the most elaborate art frauds in history, Davis has nightmares about confronting Lawrence Salander, begging him for answers, for the truth.

Why did the art dealer spend decades cultivating his friendship even as he sold more than 90 of father’s paintings behind his back, dismantling a collection that Davis had sought so hard to preserve? How could he have collaborated with Davis for 23 years, working together on an exhaustive catalog that detailed the story behind every Stuart Davis work, only to be sentenced before it was published?

What of the more mundane things — those endless, richly satisfying conversations about art and philosophy and life? Was any of it real?

The same anguished questions have tortured dozens of other victims — from celebrities to wealthy collectors to artists and those managing their estates — defrauded of some $120 million by a man some call the Bernard Madoff of the art world, owner of a lavish Upper East Side gallery one luxury magazine called the best in the world.

Earlier this year, Salander pleaded guilty to 29 counts of grand larceny and fraud. In August, he was sentenced to six to 18 years in prison.

In court documents and testimony, the 61-year-old Salander outlined his schemes: How he would sell art he didn’t own, sometimes peddling the same painting or shares in a painting to two or more buyers. How he falsified records, lied to investors, submitted fraudulent loan applications, sold paintings that were for exhibit only, and pocketed the money to pay for private jets, his multimillion dollar Manhattan town house, his 66-acre estate upstate.

Was it all a great con from the start? Or did Salander, as some suggest, cross to “the dark side” of the art world, taking advantage of a strangely unregulated place where priceless works are often consigned to galleries with little more than a handshake, where trust is as important as receipts?

“Larry Salander took that which is the essence the art world — relationships — and violated it in the worst possible way,” says Ellyn Shander, a psychiatrist who lost her late father’s art collection to Salander. “He is a sly, manipulative sociopath, a con man with no soul.”

But others describe Salander as a misunderstood visionary who was passionate about great art, who nourished lesser known artists as well as established ones, who ultimately felt betrayed himself by the world he loved and the backers who once believed in him.

“Was he a cheat? Yes. Was he ruthless? Yes,” says artist Paul Resika, who exhibited with Salander for 19 years and lost much of his own art. “But he did great exhibitions that I consider a very high and moral thing to do. He did tremendous things for art.”

Resika is speaking on the phone from Cape Cod. In the background his wife cries out, in disgust: “Larry Salander was a villain.”

___

Ellyn Shander treasures childhood memories of the Sunday morning ritual with her father, Alexander Pearlman. They would take the train to Manhattan from their home in Queens, sometimes with her two sisters in tow, and spend the afternoon wandering through art galleries, inevitably winding up at the Salander-O’Reilly gallery on 79th Street. (Salander’s partner, William O’Reilly, retired from the gallery in 1997, but Salander kept the original name.)

Shander’s eyes glow as she sits in her Stamford, Conn., home and describes growing up in a house filled with art, how the children pretended to friends and neighbors that their father, a physician, was an amateur painter because they were afraid the work would be stolen.

The tiny figurative piece by Modigliani — the first her father ever bought. The vivid Monet seascape. Small Picassos and Cezannes.

All had their stories and memories. They were more than just objects, Shander says. “They were part of our life, part of our connection to our father.”

At the gallery, Shander remembers a stocky, balding, genial man who embraced her father and called him “Doc.” They would stroll through rooms filled with paintings — American modernists like Marsden Hartley and Albert Pinkham Ryder as well as works by Matisse, Corot, Constable, Rembrandt and El Greco — as the two men talked about the latest acquisitions. Her father, Shander says, loved Salander like a son.

And so after Pearlman died in 2004 at the age of 91, his daughters felt relieved when Salander drove to his home after the funeral and loaded the entire collection into a van “for safekeeping.” It was the last they ever saw of their father’s art.

“He walked in all concerned and crying for my dad, and he walked out with a $2 million-plus art collection that he stole. What kind of human being does that?” Shander cries.

And, she adds bitterly, what kind of a world lets him get away with it?

In fact, the art world, with its clubby nature and casual intimacy between dealers, collectors, galleries and artists, is particularly vulnerable to exactly the kind of fraud that Salander masterminded.

“It’s a world of relationships, friendships, handshakes,” says longtime Manhattan gallery owner Joan Washburn. “A world where you only deal with people you know and trust. And often, transactions are very informal.”

It’s also a world of fabulous wealth, enormous egos and creative pride. Artists, eager to have their work exhibited in the finest galleries, hand over paintings with few safeguards. Paper trails can be murky, especially with paintings or sculptures that are hundreds of years old. Title is not always clear. And the agreements that are signed when a work is handed to a gallery for sale or for exhibit offer little protection if the gallery owner is dishonest or goes bankrupt.

Art is also portable. It’s difficult to track whether a piece is in an exhibit, or a gallery or in storage, especially if a dealer is lying about its whereabouts.

Certain legal protections are available, such as filing a Uniform Commercial Code contract or lien that protects the title of the work. But in the art world that’s often considered unseemly, almost a violation of the very trust that is the heart of deals between galleries, collectors and artists.

So Salander was free to build his empire, and his reputation, by manipulating that trust.

By the time his gallery collapsed in October 2007, Salander had become a towering presence in the art world, a self-taught scholar who had risen from relatively modest beginnings managing his father’s small gallery in Manhattan and another in Wilton, Conn. An amateur painter himself (his oil depiction of the crucifixion is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum), Salander’s charm, his prodigious knowledge of art, his energy and passion were irresistible to many.

Tennis star John McEnroe, a serious art collector, apprenticed with Salander in 1993 and is the godfather of one of Salander’s seven children. Abstract expressionist painter Robert De Niro Sr., the late father of the actor, became Salander’s friend and exhibited at the gallery. Hedge fund executive Roy Lennox, a neighbor of Salander’s in Millbrook, N.Y., invested millions in various deals with the gallery. Later, he would describe them in court documents as “nothing more than an illegal Ponzi scheme.”

Earl Davis … Alexander Pearlman … John and Neelon Crawford, sons of the painter and photographer Ralston Crawford … T. Kinney Frelinghuysen, nephew of abstract artist Suzy Frelinghuysen who also represents the estate of her husband, artist George L.K. Morris. All were the recipients of Salander’s perceived bounty, and ultimately his betrayal.

“It was such a beautiful location and Larry was very personable and we were really looking to showcase the art and give Suzy and George a bigger market presence,” says Frelinghuysen, director of the Frelinghuysen Morris house in Lenox, Mass. Though apprehensive at first about leaving his old gallery and handing over so much work, Frelinghuysen was thrilled by the prospects of a magnificent exhibition, and flattered that Salander included some of the nephew’s original work. “I was very proud, and Larry was excited and happy.”

Other collectors and artists felt the same way, privileged to be in such a special place, filled with a sense of gratitude as they handed over valuable pieces.

Even staff at the gallery felt anointed by Salander. Paula Hornbostel, hired as a researcher in 1996, spent a thrilling 11 years at her dream job working for a boss and mentor who inspired her. Salander nicknamed her “Supe” — short for “superwoman” — because of her ability to verify the work of obscure pre-Raphaelite painters. In 2000 Salander flew her to Boston in a private plane and introduced her to the Gaston Lachaise foundation, whose directors were so impressed that they named her curator. Salander went to Hornbostel’s wedding. He offered to help publish her graduate work.

“It was just all so exciting and I was learning so much,” Hornbostel says, recounting traveling expeditions to Budapest and Prague, parties at Salander’s country estate, cozy dinners with artists at his favorite Italian restaurant, Girasole, on East 82nd Street. In 2004, when Salander rented the opulent Frick collection museum on 70th Street for a lavish 40th birthday party for his second wife, Julie, he hired Hornbostel’s sister, a baker, to cater the event.

But even as she was swept up in Salander’s magical world, Hornbostel wondered privately about how he was paying for it all. Her sister was having trouble getting paid. Hornbostel suspected others were, too. The gallery was simply not selling enough work to pay for its exhibits and overhead.

Hornbostel wasn’t the only one who questioned Salander’s lifestyle. In the fall of 2005, Salander moved the gallery to a 25,000-square-foot Italianate mansion on East 71st street with lush velvet walls, a marble foyer and a rent of more than $150,000 a month. Many other gallery owners wondered if he was over-stretched.

Salander talked grandly about bringing “soul” back to art, about acquiring the greatest collection of old masters and Renaissance paintings. He made no secret of his disdain for the astronomical sums of money paid by wealthy new collectors for pieces by contemporary stars like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. Art, he said, was the expression of the human soul. And America, he wrote, had become “a soulless society … one that would value a work of art by Andy Warhol or by Francis Bacon three times more than that of a great, late masterpiece by Rembrandt.”

Salander’s new gallery would change that. He was going to single-handedly restore the art market’s soul. Says Hornbostel, “He talked about it all the time.”

The art world was skeptical. Old masters don’t come on the market very often and their authenticity can be hard to trace.

“It was just a mystery to the rest of us, how he could afford it all,” Washburn says.

Then, almost overnight, the mystery was revealed.

___

For Davis, the first hint of trouble came in 2005 when he began asking basic accounting questions about hundreds of paintings and drawings stored with Salander. He was shocked to learn that several pieces had been sold without his permission. Salander stalled, promising that Davis would be paid, offering vague answers about the whereabouts of other works.

Though Davis trusted Salander implicitly, he was worried. There were rumors about cash-flow problems at the gallery, about others not getting paid, about paintings being sold without authorization. Trade magazines began were reporting on legal complaints by collectors, Salander’s former landlord, even his former partner, all saying they hadn’t been paid.

Salander kept reassuring his friend. “The only thing that could stand in the way of paying you would be my death,” he wrote in one 2006 e-mail. Little did Davis know that similar assurances were being sent to dozens of others.

Finally, when Davis demanded a return of all the work, Salander produced a favorite piece — “Music Hall,” from his father’s Ashcan period. Davis felt so relieved, he stopped asking questions, at least for a time. Some time later, according to Davis, Salander called apologetically and said he had been mistaken. “Music Hall” had in fact been sold to a collector years before and he was forced to return it. Davis says he eventually discovered that Salander had simply borrowed back the piece temporarily to falsely reassure his friend.

Later, dozens of similar tales would unfold, many of them detailed in the blizzard of lawsuits that eventually became part of the Salander saga. In the case of McEnroe, Salander persuaded him to buy half shares in two paintings, Arshile Gorky’s “Pirate I” and “Pirate II.” McEnroe later discovered that the shares, for which he had paid $2 million, already belonged to someone else.

“The level of deception was just staggering,” Davis says. “And the level of control.”

But things were spiraling out of control. By 2007 the lawsuits were mounting, as were questions about the gallery’s viability.

Salander’s response, in press reports, was to dismiss the lawsuits as disputes among friends. Everything would be resolved, he said. And the key would be one of the most ambitious exhibitions of old masters paintings ever mounted, a show called “Masterpieces of Art: Five Centuries of Painting and Sculpture,” to open in the fall of 2007. Anchoring the show: a rare Caravaggio on loan from a London dealer. It was called “Apollo, the Lute Player” and Salander boasted that he could sell it for $100 million.

But that wasn’t enough to assuage the growing unease.

In Massachusetts, even before he learned of the lawsuits, Frelinghuysen became suspicious when a collector from California called to praise a piece he had just bought from the collection stored with Salander. The piece was not for sale. Salander assured Frelinghuysen that the gallery had made a mistake, and that he would be paid — the same assurances he was making to so many others.

Today Frelinghuysen says he feels not only betrayed, and guilty about losing his aunt’s work, but also painfully naive. “I was still thinking of Larry as a buddy, who believed in the integrity of the foundation,” he says. Court documents indicate that Frelinghuysen’s foundation was defrauded of 41 works worth more than $2 million.

In Connecticut, after reading about Salander’s troubles, Shander went directly to the gallery and demanded her father’s work. She was escorted out by a security guard. Later, she says, Salander called and “tried to sweet-talk me into a deal to sell five paintings and get paid over five months.” Shander refused. She found out later that part of the collection had been sold. The rest is now tied up in bankruptcy proceedings; even her lawyer says it is unlikely she or her sisters will ever retrieve it.

Brooklyn artist John Crawford, son of Ralston Crawford, experienced the same kind of stomach-churning unease when he requested an inventory of his father’s work. In 2007, sick of not getting answers, he drove his 1987 Dodge Dakota into the city, parked on 71st Street, marched into the gallery and loaded any of his father’s paintings that he could find.

In Wyoming, Crawford’s brother, Neelon, was beginning to feel desperate. Even three trips to Manhattan couldn’t get him a full accounting, or a meeting with Salander. Finally, tipped off by a sympathetic gallery worker some of his fathers’ paintings were about to be sold for far less than he had agreed, Crawford called New York City Detective Mark Fishstein in the art fraud division. As Crawford tells it, the detective made a short, laconic phone call to Salander.

“There’s a guy in Wyoming who wants his paintings, you understand? There’s a guy in Wyoming who wants to be paid, you understand? There’s a guy in Wyoming who wants everything shipped to him on a truck next Friday, you understand?”

The detective ended the conversation with a veiled threat to personally visit the gallery.

Most of the paintings were shipped by the end of the week. Crawford laughs heartily as he tells the story. But, he adds, “I feel a lot luckier than most.”

Hornbostel, Salander’s “superwoman,” was not so lucky. In her basement office, she recalls a creeping sense of doom as the gallery prepared for the Caravaggio show. Salander seemed grimly distracted, everyone else was busy, and Hornbostel couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong.

It wasn’t until another staff member mentioned that a Lachaise sculpture “Garden Lady” was being boxed and carted off in a shipping truck upstairs that she panicked. She burst into Salander’s fifth-floor office, crying out that the piece was not for sale. With a grand gesture, Hornbostel recalls, he picked up the phone and announced, “there has been a mistake, cancel the shipment.” But by the time Hornbostel raced back down to the ground floor, the piece was gone.

She remembers the chaotic day the gallery closed, ordered padlocked by a court after Salander’s former partner and biggest investor, Donald Schupak, filed a series of legal motions to end Salander’s control. It was the opening day of the Caravaggio exhibit. Earlier that day, the London dealer had marched into the gallery and removed “Apollo, the Lute Player,” from the wall. Crowds had gathered outside, some hoping to see the exhibit, others demanding their work.

Hornbostel watched in dismay, barely beginning to digest the level of Salander’s betrayal. And yet she hugged him farewell, saying, “I guess I won’t come in tomorrow.”

“I still don’t know why I did that,” she says.

___

About six months after the gallery closed, Hornbostel was having lunch with her husband and young children when Salander and his wife walked into the restaurant. He smiled, joked with the kids, never mentioned the gallery or the fact that he had filed for personal bankruptcy. Hornbostel could barely contain her anger, and her bewilderment. The Lachaise Foundation, for which Hornbostel had been responsible, had lost an estimated $6.6 million.

“There was no apology, no remorse,” Hornbostel says. “After all the agony he had put me through. I kept looking at him thinking: How could you? Who are you?”

“He was a crook from the start and I believe he thought he could get away with it to the end,” says the poet and collector Stanley Moss, who professes never to have bought into what he calls the Salander myth. He tells of a piece, a small Madonna and child supposedly by 15th-century Italian sculptor Luca Della Robbia, that Salander gave him as a housewarming gift when he moved upstate several years ago. “I knew it was a fake, and he knew I knew it was a fake,” Moss says. “I think it was all about the glamour of money.”

But others have more complicated feelings about a man they had considered a great scholar and friend. Collector Monty Diamond’s voice cracks on the phone as he talks of how hard it is to reconcile his friend of 40 years — the “standup guy” with whom he shared summers on Brant Lake in the Adirondacks, the man who taught him a love and appreciation of great art — with the broken man he witnessed in court.

“I was the beneficiary of this great friendship,” Diamond says. “And at the same time he duped me, he was a con man …” Diamond’s voice trails off.

Salander would offer no public explanations. His sobbing apology in the courtroom seemed, to many of his victims, to be entirely self-centered.

“I’ve lost my wife, my business and my reputation,” he said. “I am utterly and completely disgraced.”

Salander, now jailed at Riker’s Island, has said no more; through his lawyer, he declined to be interviewed.

If there are clues to his actions perhaps they lie in the pages of his unpublished manuscript, “Soul Wars,” a rambling 578-page treatise on the state of the human soul.

In it, Salander laments a decaying society in which “too many of us have prostituted our beautiful souls for money.” He took a risk, Salander writes, “by standing up for the human soul and the art that proves it exists.”

There is one chapter titled “Betrayal.”

“All betrayals are to some degree premeditated,” Salander writes. “Betrayal is never an accident.”

The art world’s Bernie Madoff, and his deceptions (AP) | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

CHICAGO, Sept. 15 /CHICAGOPRESSRELEASE.COM/ — On October 1st Insight Psychological Centers will begin occupying the entire 19th floor of the 333 North Michigan Avenue building. This bigger and better location offers private waiting areas, expanded treatment space and beautiful metropolitan views. A state-of-the-art kitchen will be catered by Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, nourishing Insight’s eating disorders, weight loss and mental health clients. The new location is only a short walking distance from the current 205 North Michigan Ave. location, placing it within a couple blocks of Millennium Place, the first transitional housing program in Chicago developed specifically for women with anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorders.

Visible along the Magnificent Mile, 333 North Michigan is an art deco styled skyscraper located in the easy-to-get-to Michigan–Wacker Historic District area of downtown Chicago. The building was designed by Holabird & Root and was completed in 1928 as a competitive entry for the Tribune Tower contest. It was also one of the first four completed skyscrapers in Chicago’s Michigan–Wacker Historic District, giving Insight’s patients a place to enjoy part of Chicago’s history and rich architecture. Furthermore, with the recent triumph of the Chicago Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup victory, the 333 North Michigan building has become an even bigger part of Chicago’s history. 333 North Michigan is owned by the Wirtz Corporation’s building management company, Wirtz Realty, and the Wirtz Corporation also owns the illustrious Chicago Blackhawks.

“Wirtz Realty is delighted to have a business such as Insight Psychological Centers here at 333 North Michigan. We are proud to associate with a company that reaches out to the community to address and treat medical and mental health issues like eating and obesity disorders that are all too  often overlooked,” said property manager, Tony Rizzuto.

333 North Michigan will have more than double the area of Insight Psychological Centers’ current Chicago office. “Our new site will allow the flexibility and creativity to expand services and continue to provide outstanding outpatient mental health treatment to the Chicagoland community,” says co-founder Dr. Susan McClanahan.

Regarding the new office’s benefits, co-founder Dr. Jenny Conviser says, “The additional space will expand what Insight already offers in terms of our intensive treatment programs and multidisciplinary approach to challenging mental health issues. Part of this positive change will be the large kitchen we will use to educate groups and individuals on proper nutrition.” The 333 North Michigan location will also include a relaxing water-wall feature in its open space, many close parking options and easy public transportation access.

About Insight Psychological Centers – Treating eating disorders, weight management and general psychological issues, Insight delivers awareness and recovery seven days per week in Chicago, Evanston, Willowbrook and Skokie. Managed by Northwestern University adjunct faculty members Drs. Jenny Conviser and Susan McClanahan, Insight is a team of credentialed psychologists, psychiatrists and other clinicians providing individual, family and group therapy to Chicago area communities. Insight is also affiliated with CORE Health Centers, a modern medical practice that combines mind and medicine for weight management for people who need to lose weight. For more information visit www.insightillinois.com or www.insightforeating.com. You can also email us at info@insightillinois.com or call 312-540-9955.

SOURCE Insight Psychological Centers

http://www.insightillinois.com

Expanded Facilities for Mental Health Coming to Chicago This Fall | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

“What I’ve tried to accomplish, like, is making art products … so I still believe that (the song) can be classified as art because it’s an original piece and the edge and alternative is there, and the integrity is intact,” he said in an interview last week.

The song, about a gold-digging ex, is titled “(Expletive) You” and he drops 16 f-bombs in just 3 1/2 minutes over a sweet-sounding, retro groove.

The current video is a colorful stream of the song’s lyrics and its been viewed more than 3.7 million times in the last 11 days on the singer’s YouTube page. An official video will be released this week and the song will appear on Cee Lo’s album “The Lady Killer,” out on Dec. 7.

Though the jam has gotten rave reviews, it’s also had its share of criticism. Dan Isett, the director of public policy for the Parents Television Council, said in a statement that the song “is just the latest example of an entertainment industry bent on racing to the bottom of the barrel.”

But Cee Lo said he was trying to elevate music with the song, and it’s something that the music industry does not do enough.

“The system does not, you know, advocate art so to speak, but it does package and promote products and product placement and there’s a definitive difference between the two, art and product,” he said. “I have yet to sit down and try to write something for the sake of radio. I just never done it, not consciously.”

Still, there will be a radio-friendly version of the viral hit: The mildly titled “Forget You” will hit airwaves soon, though Cee Lo says that wasn’t the initial plan.

“It wasn’t like we were looking for it to be a radio hit of some sort. It was only until a short time after that we considered doing a clean version just in case,” he said.

Cee Lo is best-known as one-half of the Grammy-winning duo Gnarls Barkley, who had the instant classic “Crazy.” He first appeared on the music scene in 1995 with the Southern hip-hop group Goodie Mob.

Cee Lo calls the success of his latest song “a miracle of some sort.” Although he may have lofty views of its artistic merit, he’s also aware that it’s just a dose of naughtiness too.

“I get to be bad a little bit so that’s what was fun about it. It’s quite a bit of mischief in that song, so we weren’t taking ourselves too seriously,” he said.

In October, Cee Lo will host Fuse TV’s “Lay It Down,” an interview and performance-based show he calls “more intimate (and) off the record.”

___

Online:

http://www.ceelogreen.com/home

Cee Lo says f-bomb song is ‘art’ | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

LONDON – Corporations worried about the bottom line are taking a look at their office walls.

Over decades, many of the world’s wealthiest banks and companies have built up art collections, rich in modern masters, that are the envy of many museums. Now, some are selling off works that adorn offices and boardrooms — some from choice, but others to pay off hungry creditors.

The latter category includes collapsed bank Lehman Brothers, whose multimillion-dollar collection of works by Damien Hirst, Gerhard Richter and others is going under the hammer next month.

“Over the last five or six years we’ve dealt with more and more corporate as well as private clients,” said Saul Ingram, head of European corporate art services at Sotheby’s auction house.

“Obviously there have been economic changes in the last couple of years, and I think that has heralded a change in attitudes — that these collections need to be trimmed, to focus on quality.”

Cathy Elkies, head of private and corporate collections at Christie’s, also says she has seen an increase in the corporate side of the business, and expects it to continue.

“In some cases, organizations are editing and refocusing their collections,” she said. “Others are looking to completely divest themselves of their art offerings.”

Corporations collect art for a variety of reasons, of which turning a profit is often the least important. Some companies like to see supporting emerging artists as a form of corporate social responsibility, or philanthropy — works can be lent to museums and galleries for shows.

Others use art to flaunt their corporate wealth. Fred Goodwin, former chief executive of the once high-flying but now state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland used to boast about the David Hockney in his office.

Sometimes, art is used to enliven the work environment. Half a century ago, industrialist Alexander Orlow adorned the walls of his Turmac tobacco factory in the Netherlands with bright abstract works — inspired by the theme “joie de vivre” — to cheer his workers.

British American Tobacco later acquired the company and closed the factory. In March, BAT sold more than 160 of the artworks at auction for 13.6 million euros.

“We want our offices to be an interesting and stimulating environment,” said Robert Korzinek, a fine art underwriter at Hiscox, which is both an art insurer and a collector, with a trove of contemporary works by Gavin Turk, Grayson Perry and others. “It’s aimed at stimulating our staff, and stimulating our guests.”

Around the world, companies are sitting on artistic riches that the public seldom sees. The JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, founded by David Rockefeller in 1959, has 30,000 pieces, including works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol.

In Britain, the banks RBS, HSBC and Barclays all have large caches of art — unlike BP PLC, which despite drawing protests from environmentalists accusing it of using art sponsorships to whitewash its oil-stained image, doesn’t have a large corporate collection of its own.

“In certain of our buildings around the U.K. and elsewhere there are pieces of art,” said BP spokesman David Nicholas. “But there are also many, many photos of oil platforms.”

Germany’s Deutsche Bank began collecting art in the 1970s and now has a trove of more than 56,000 works, by artists including Joseph Beuys, Henri Matisse, Nan Goldin, Jeff Koons and Lucian Freud, displayed on the walls of its offices and branches in 48 countries.

When companies go under, it can trigger an art market bonanza. In December, bankruptcy administrators of troubled Italian airline Alitalia sold a collection of Futurist artworks for 1.2 million euros.

In June, Sotheby’s sold 1,000 photographs by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and other lens masters as part of a bankruptcy court-approved sale of the collection of defunct camera-maker Polaroid.

The tradition of corporations buying art in good times — and selling it in bad — stretches back decades. One pioneer was IBM president Thomas Watson, Sr., who amassed works by Frida Kahlo and other artists to decorate the IBM pavilion at the 1939 World Art Fair in New York. In the 1990s, a cash-strapped IBM sold its collection through Sotheby’s for $31 million.

Other sales have been even bigger. In 1989 a pension fund for British railway workers, which had been buying art as an investment for years, sold its collection for $99 million. In 1998, the Reader’s Digest corporate collection sold for $93 million.

Judd Tully, editor-at-large of Art and Auction magazine, says we’re unlikely nowadays to see big companies selling off artworks in bulk because of the negative publicity it would generate.

“It raises a red flag — ‘They’re selling their art collection, they must be going broke,’” he said.

More likely, companies will sell selected high-value works, with the money often channeled back into corporate art collections.

In June, Germany’s HypoVereinsbank sold a blue sponge painting by Yves Klein from its collection through Sotheby’s for 6.2 million pounds.

When Germany’s Commerzbank took over Dresdner Bank in 2009, it also acquired Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture “Walking Man,” which became the most expensive artwork ever when it was sold at Sotheby’s in London in February for 65 million pounds.

Next month’s Lehman Brothers auctions in at Sotheby’s in New York and Christie’s in London are expected to raise $12 million for the bank’s creditors — a significant sum, though only a tiny fraction of the $613 billion in debts held by Lehman when it collapsed in September 2008, helping trigger a global financial meltdown.

Korzinek, the underwriter, said he expected interest in the sale to be high — and not just because of the quality of the art.

“It’ll be interesting to see whether the Lehman provenance increases the value of the collection,” he said. “There will be some who will see these not just as works of art, but a chance to buy a memento mori of the credit crunch.”

____

Associated Press Writers Ula Ilnytzky in New York and Melissa Eddy in Berlin contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Sotheby’s: http://www.sothebys.com

Christie’s: http://www.christies.com

Will tough times trigger corporate art selloff? (AP) | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

LOS ANGELES – Billionaire Eli Broad has chosen to build a museum for his contemporary art collection in downtown Los Angeles.

Broad’s announcement Monday came minutes after a panel of local and state officials approved a plan to lease 2.5 acres of county-owned land to Broad.

Under the deal, Broad will finance construction of the $80-million to $100-million museum and contribute $200 million toward its operation. He will pay $7.7 million over the course of the 99-year-lease.

Broad made his billions as co-founder of developer KB Home and through the sale of insurer SunAmerican.

His 2,000-piece collection includes works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Salvador Dali and Joan Miro. He was also considering building the museum in Santa Monica.

Billionaire Broad chooses LA site for art museum (AP) | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

VIENNA – A 12-year battle over the possession of a painting that was stolen from a Jewish Austrian by the Nazis came to a close on Monday when the work by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele was displayed at a Vienna museum.

The oil painting was returned over the weekend after the Leopold Museum agreed to pay $19 million (15 million euros) as part of the settlement to the estate of art dealer Lea Bondi Jaray, the original owner.

U.S. authorities had refused to return the painting to the Leopold Museum after it was exhibited in 1998 at the New York Museum of Modern Art because of a claim by her descendants.

Bondi Jaray was forced to sell the painting, “Portrait of Wally,” at an unrealistically low price in the prelude to World War II as part of a widespread Nazi campaign that stripped Jews in Austria, Germany and later other European countries of their possessions.

“Portrait of Wally” — which pictures Valerie “Wally” Neuzil, a woman Schiele knew and used as a model — was among more than 100 works the Leopold Foundation had leant to MoMA.

U.S. customs refused to let the work leave the country after Henry Bondi of Princeton, New Jersey, filed a claim that said his late aunt was forced to give up the painting before fleeing Vienna in 1939 to escape to London when Germany annexed Austria.

She died in 1969. Henry Bondi also has since died.

The controversy over the portrait, which the Leopold Museum acquired after the war, contributed to Austria passing a 1998 law that stipulates the restitution of property taken from the country’s Jews by the Nazis.

But the restitution law applies to state institutions, not to private museums such as the Leopold Foundation — something that Vienna’s Jewish community asserts was exploited by Leopold.

The museum was created by the late Rudolf Leopold. He is credited with assembling Austria’s largest and most important private art collection, which includes more than 5,000 works by renowned artists such as Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka.

According to the Jewish community’s website, paintings by Schiele, Klimt and Egger-Lienz that were looted by the Nazis were bought by the Austrian state with public funds and given to the Leopold Foundation.

The foundation acknowledges that it is not ruled by the restitution law, but denies any wrongdoing.

Andreas Noedl, who sits on the Leopold museum’s board, acknowledged the gross injustice done to Austria’s Jews, telling reporters on Monday that the portrait “reflects the history of the horrendous atrocities during the Holocaust.”

Leopold Museum chief Peter Weinhaeupl called the return a “symbolic day” for the museum.

___

Online: http://www.raubkunst.at and http://www.leopoldmuseum.org

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Dali is best known as a surrealist, his melting watches an iconic image of that movement. But after about 10 years, his relationship with that group grew strained in the late 1930s for a variety reasons both artistic and political. “Salvador Dali: The Late Work,” opening at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta on Saturday, focuses on the period from 1940 to 1983.

“It’s become a really interesting area for investigation because you have Dali’s career which spans almost all of the 20th century, but historically people have really only looked at the 1930s,” said exhibition curator Elliott King. “It was almost like he died in 1940.”

Dali declared himself a classic painter in 1941, and while many critics disparaged his later work as kitsch or too commercial, the general public may not be able to discern much difference between the surrealist period and the later works, King said.

“Even though Dali was defining his work as a radical separation and a lot of critics really began taking that divide up to define late Dali, there are a lot of interesting continuities that kind of work through the whole,” he said.

For that reason, King said, the new exhibition works on multiple levels. For Dali newcomers, it provides an introduction to the deep imagination and showmanship of the Spanish artist. For those who know Dali well, it may challenge perceptions of his later work and provide a glimpse of works not seen before.

The exhibit opens with photos by American photographer Philippe Halsman of the mustachioed artist in crazy poses showcasing what King describes as Dali’s “wacky showman” side. It then moves into some earlier works to give visitors some background.

From there, it progresses to Dali’s exploration of “nuclear mysticism,” which reflects two recurring influences on Dali’s late work — his return to the Catholic Church and nuclear physics.

A perfect example of this concept is “The Madonna of Port-Lligat,” which shows the Madonna and Child fragmented and breaking into particles. The large-scale painting is on loan from a museum in Japan and hasn’t been seen in the U.S. since 1951.

Another impressive piece that illustrates this theme is “Santiago El Grande,” an homage to Saint James, the patron saint of Spain, which features Dali’s vision of the crucifixion and a horse rearing up above an atomic explosion.

Designed as an altarpiece, King said the painting is best viewed from below, lying on the floor and looking up. (Though, for safety reasons, the High would prefer visitors just crouch.) On loan from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick, Canada, the painting hasn’t traveled since 1959.

One of the most famous images in the exhibition is “Christ of St. John of the Cross,” stunning in part for its vantage point — looking down from above on the crucified Christ. On an adjacent wall is a photo of Dali with Bobby Kennedy in front of the painting in 1965, the last time the painting voyaged to the U.S. from its home in Scotland.

A treat for Dali fanatics is “Assumpta Corpuscularia Lapilazulina,” which has been in private collections and hasn’t been viewed publicly since 1959. The large painting features Dali’s wife, Gala, as the Virgin Mary dematerializing into Heaven.

“It’s something that I’ve written a lot about, but I’d never seen it before it came here,” King said. “I was so excited to actually see it come out of its shipping crate.”

One of King’s goals with the exhibition was to bring together several significant paintings that haven’t been seen in the U.S. in many decades — or, in some cases, not at all.

“A lot of these paintings are pilgrimage sites of their own,” he said. “I thought if we could get one of them, we’d be in really good shape, and we ended up getting four.”

The final section of the exhibition centers on what King calls Dali’s pop art, which came well before similar commercial efforts by artists like Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons.

There are brooches so gaudy they look like costume jewelry; a chess set in which all the pieces are molds of his fingers, except the rooks which are copies of the salt shakers from the St. Regis hotel; and portraits of American high society figures.

A 1960 film, “Chaos and Creation,” in which Dali used a motorcycle, popcorn and pigs to create an abstract painting, may be the first example of video art, King said.

The last gallery houses a hologram of rock star Alice Cooper and “The Sistine Madonna” painting from 1958 that superimposes the image of the Virgin and Child over a photograph of the Pope’s ear rendered in a benday dot pattern, preceding similar pop art works.

A wall of two dozen magazine covers — just a fraction of the many he appeared on over the years — demonstrates his status as a true celebrity artist.

The exhibition is organized by the High, in collaboration with the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., and the Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali in Figueres, Spain. The exhibition will be at the High, its sole venue, through Jan. 9.

___

Online:

High Museum of Art: http://www.high.org/

New Dali exhibition exclusively at Atlanta museum (AP) | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Fine art investors including former tennis star John McEnroe and the estate of Robert De Niro Sr, father of the actor, are unlikely to recoup millions lost after the New York dealer in whom they put their trust was jailed for six to 18 years for fraud.

Lawrence Salander, who pleaded guilty to defrauding clients in a scam that lasted 13 years, was ordered to serve the maximum 18 years in the plea arrangement by the judge, Michael J Obus. Portrayed as the Bernie Madoff of art, he was ordered to pay $120m in restitution, but is likely never to do so after declaring bankruptcy.

In the state supreme court in Manhattan, Salander, 61, apologised to his victims. “You trusted me and I betrayed you and I am deeply sorry for the pain and loss my actions have caused you,” he said. “I have lost my wife, my business and my reputation. I am utterly and completely disgraced.”

For once, Salander was speaking the truth: he has suffered a spectacular fall from grace. For almost 40 years he was a prominent figure in the New York art market, with a Manhattan gallery that had a formidable reputation for its Renaissance and other collections.

His lavish lifestyle included a private jet for trips to Europe, a six-storey town house on the Upper East Side and a 66-acre estate in New York state in which he built a small baseball stadium. But his wealth was increasingly founded upon deception.

The prosecution portrayed him as a “pathological, self-absorbed conman” who sold many important works of art without the owners’ knowledge or permission.

Earl Davis, the son of artist Stuart Davis who died in 1964, entrusted 96 of his father’s paintings to Salander for sale but only found out later that 90 had been disposed of. “Had I been robbed at gunpoint or by a thief in the night it would have been preferable to the ruthlessly drawn out torture that he inflicted upon me,” Davis told the court.

The New York Times reported that Ellyn Shander, daughter of an art investor Alexander Pearlman, described to the court how Salander had stolen her father’s collection of works by Cezanne, Monet and Picasso after his death. “He walked in all concerned and crying for my dad, and he walked out with a $2 million-plus art collection that he stole. What kind of human being does that?”

McEnroe was fleeced of about $2m after Salander persuaded him to invest in a painting by Arshile Gorky that the art collector did not own.

Robert De Niro recently managed to regain six works by his father, who was an abstract expressionist artist. Salander was accused of disposing of a batch of 12 De Niro paintings and sculptures without the actor’s approval.

Originally reported by the Guardian. Read the original article here.

Lawrence Salander, New York art dealer who fleeced stars, jailed | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Published : Monday, 02 Aug 2010, 9:50 AM CDT

FOX Chicago News

Chicago – It might sound like junk, but the city calls it art. Nine recycled refrigerators have been transformed into public art along the Magnificent Mile.

The Fine Art Fridges are part of a promotion for ComEd’s appliance recycling program.

ComEd has recycled 43,000 refrigerators since the start of the program.

They fridges will be in place until September 15.

Originally reported by FOX News Chicago. Read the original article here.

Fridge Art Takes Over Michigan Ave. | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

ComEd Launches Refrigerator Art Exhibit Centered on Green Living

CHICAGO, July 30 /CHICAGOPRESSRELEASE.COM/ — Beginning Monday, pedestrians along Michigan Avenue will be in for a cool surprise when they encounter a new art exhibit sponsored by ComEd:  Fine Art Fridges. The display, which runs through September 15, features recycled refrigerators that have been transformed into works of art.

Fine Art Fridges depicts themes ranging from Chicago architecture to a celebration of flowers. In one of the pieces, artist VooDoo Larry Grobe has transformed a vintage 1950s Philco fridge into a jazzy “VooDoo Hot Rod.” In another, Nicole Beck celebrates wildlife in a mosaic tribute to endangered life in the Gulf of Mexico.

Nine pieces designed by Chicago-area artists will be displayed on the sidewalk along the Magnificent Mile between Chicago Avenue and Illinois Street.  

The exhibit was created to raise awareness for ComEd’s Appliance Recycling Program, through which ComEd will haul away your old, second working refrigerator or freezer free of charge. In return, customers receive $25.00 per appliance. To date, the program has removed more than 43,000 inefficient appliances from the market.

“Fine Art Fridges is a fresh approach to our ongoing efforts to educate our customers through our Smart Ideas(sm) portfolio of options that can help customers save money by becoming more energy efficient,” said president and COO Anne Pramaggiore. “Many households have an extra working refrigerator or freezer in their basement or garage. What they may not know is that older refrigerator appliances can use up to five times more energy than their energy-efficient equivalents. Continued usage of an older model can result in $150 per year in extra electricity costs.”

The specific Michigan Avenue exhibit locations are:

To learn more about ComEd’s Fine Art Fridge exhibit, Refrigerator Recycling Program, please visit: www.comed.com. For energy saving tips, please visit www.comed.com/smartideas.

Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC), one of the nation’s largest electric utilities with approximately 5.4 million customers. ComEd provides service to approximately 3.8 million customers across Northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the state’s population.

SOURCE ComEd

http://www.exeloncorp.comhttps://www.comed.com

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