This month, Art in America’s David Ebony interviewed German artist Katharina Grosse. She currently has a show, “Katharina Grosse: One Floor Up More Highly” at MASS MoCA, up through October 31st. Ebony describes this project in terms of a European perception of American landscapes.  “Many Europeans think of America in terms of vast landscapes and infinite sky, and urban centers packed with towering buildings and teeming masses, all in a rather precarious state of flux.” Grosse’s work “could be seen as an homage to an idealized if not wholly fiction place, such as the American frontier.” “This project, like most of Grosse’s large-scale installations, incorporates massive sculptural features that allude simultaneously to empirical space an an imaginative vista. Yet the artist’s primary means of expression is painting, and the thrust of the work is rigorously abstract. She employs painting’s illusionistic devices of light and shadow, and, with a subtle manipulation of other elements, suggest complex narratives.” Read the entire interview here: http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/conversations/2011-09-02/katharina-grosse/
A reception for emeritus, curated by Nancy Lukasiewicz, will be held this Sunday from 2-4pm in the Lyndon House Arts Center.  emeritus is a show of emeritus and former professors such as JERRY CHAPPELLE, ROBERT CLEMENTS. TOM HAMMOND, JAMES L. HANNA, RICK JOHNSON, GLEN KAUFMAN, JACK KEHOE, JUDITH McWILLIE, RON MEYERS, ANDY NASISSE, W. ROBERT NIX, GARY NOFFKE, RICHARD J. OLSEN, BILL PAUL, ART ROSENBAUM, LANNY WEBB … The Lyndon House is located at 293 Hoyt Street in Athens. North Jackson Street dead ends at Hoyt Street. For more information, visit: http://ga-athensclarkecounty.civicplus.com/index.aspx?nid=4192
This Wednesday, August 24th: “Tour at Two” at the Georgia Museum of Art! Join Paul Manoguerra, chief curator and curator of American art, in the lobby for a tour of this exhibition that includes the first wide-scale display of images from Dodd’s sketchbooks.Don’t miss it! This is the last week that this exhibition will be on display.RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=136509663108367
UGA’s student newspaper, the Red & Black, reviews the upcoming exhibition of Lamar Dodd School of Art faculty work. MMXI will be opening TONIGHT- August 19 from 7-9pm.  From the article: “There will be traditional approaches in terms of everything from the portrait to working with a microscopic camera,” said Jeffrey Whittle, gallery director at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. “Something that you couldn’t see with the naked eye, someone will be able to see in the show, as well as things that are from the artists’ imaginations; something completely invented.” http://redandblack.com/2011/08/19/university-exhibition-mixes-faculty-avant-garde-art/
This weekend is the first back in Athens. Start it off right this Saturday night! From 7-10pm, Trace Gallery will host an opening for “Surprise the Sky,” a group exhibition for Lauren Gallaspy, Erin McIntosh, and Zuzka Vaclavik. All three women are showcasing amazing works. For more information, visit the Trace Gallery website: http://www.tracegalleryathens.com/ See you there!
MFA Drawing & Painting candidate Christine Bush Roman will be exhibiting recent work at ARTini’s from August 15 through September 28. There will be an opening reception on the 15th from 6-9pm and all are welcome!  ARTini’s Studio, Gallery and Lounge is located at 296 West Broad St, right across from the Painting & Drawing Exit studios. Check out more of Roman’s work at her website: http://www.christinebushroman.com
The infinitely interesting and inspiring German neo-expressionist, Anselm Kiefer, is the subject of a new film.  From the New York Times: The idea for a film arose when Mr. Kiefer, eager for someone to document the mysterious universe he had created, invited Ms. Fiennes to visit Barjac. “It was a completely kind of mad and disorientating labyrinth,” Ms. Fiennes, 44, said over tea in the living room of a friend’s apartment here. She wandered the grounds, navigating tunnels illuminated with skylights or single bulbs, discovering a crypt and an amphitheater and a patch of land scattered with concrete towers inspired by the biblical story of Lilith that resemble modern ruins. “I was amazed,” she said. “There is an inherent theatricality or cinematic quality to what he’s made there that leant itself to filmmaking.” Follow Kiefer through his labyrinth: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/movies/sophie-fienness-over-your-cities-grass-will-grow.html?ref=arts 
Start off your August the right way. This Wednesday, August 3rd from 6-8pm at Blue Tin Studio is Aggregate, a collective exhibition of the Lamar Dodd School of Art’s painting, ceramics, enameling, and drawing summer classes. Featuring: Ceramics:Sarah Adams Fausat Aderohunmu Rachel Andreaus Chelsea DeLeon Mary Durham Jessie Hyatt Beyza Kilic Jessica Lackey Shelly Pate Amanda Qubty Philly Scruggs Drawing & Painting: Campbell Baker Tim Cisewski Stevie Fiddler Anglea Finkbeiner Aaron Fu Kory Gabriel Rob Graham Julie Jones Adrienne Kitchens Meg Massey Morgan Mitchell Aja Snyder Maisie Thompson Jeff WestEnameling: Sonni Brickhouse Michelle Kim Rhys May McCay Mercer Genevieve Meyer-Price Cindy Pruitt Tanner Scott Kimberly Stohlmann RSVP on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=154120761331198  Drawing by Aaron Fu.
Thursday, July 28th at the Georgia Museum of Art- a film screening of “Visible Silence: Marsden Hartley, Painter and Poet” at 7pm! From the GMOA website: Using more than 60 of Marsden Hartley’s paintings and drawings, as well as many photographs from collections around the world, director Michael Maglaras traces Hartley’s life and work from its earliest beginnings in Lewiston, Maine, through his travels in Europe and the United States and ends with his secluded life in a remote Maine fishing village. Special guest Maglaras will speak about the film. Introduced by Paul Manoguerra, chief curator and curator of American art (65 minutes, NR). For more information, please check out: http://www.georgiamuseum.org/index.php/calendar/event-all/film-series-artists-biographies2/2011/07/28
UGA alumni are staying extremely busy. Jessi Wohl (MFA ‘10) and current MFA candidate Justin Plakas have work in an exhibition at Zeitgeist. Together, their works “create a dialogue about the clandestine nature of suburban life,” according to Laura Huston’s review in the Nashville Scene. Read the review in its entirety here: http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/at-zeitgeist-work-by-two-artists-addresses-the-weirdness-of-suburbia/Content?oid=2580027
RIP Cy. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/cy-twombly-idiosyncratic-painter-dies-at-83/
From NPR: The Best of the Louvre, on a Single Canvas Author David McCullough discusses Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre (1831-1833) in his book, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. As of 2 days ago, this painting is being exhibited in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. McCullough describes Morse’s undertaking: “It was an extremely ambitious undertaking because many of the paintings that he was copying were hung very high up. And so he had to build a movable platform, or scaffold, that he wheeled about the galleries of the Louvre to reach his subjects. And he and the movable scaffold became a tourist attraction themselves,” McCullough says with a laugh. “His ambition was very great and he felt strongly that this painting would make the mark, would make him known everywhere. And in a way, it did. It’s certainly his masterpiece.” Read the whole article: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/03/137472386/the-best-of-the-louvre-on-a-single-canvas
An artist to be on the look-out for: Maja Vukoje In the mid-90s Maja Vukoje’s career was launched with her large-format, caricature-like oil paintings. In exaggerated colors, the paintings depict the artist - her physiognomy disfigured and contorted - in dream worlds and places of longing. In her next series, Vukoje created representations of puppets’ heads and bodies, intensely confronting the topic of man’s inner and outer fragility. Read more: http://www.undo.net/cgi-bin/undo/pressrelease/pressrelease.pl?id=1074786716&day=1074812400
Thanks to Taylor Vaught for this eye-candy: Commons, by Angelina Gualdoni http://www.angelinagualdoni.com !!!
From ArtInfo.com: Chaos Follows Van Gogh Theft in Cairo A brief guide to the ridiculous theft of and resulting confusion surrounding Van Gogh’s “Poppy Flowers,” worth an estimated $50 million. Looks like it’s time to ramp up security in the Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo… The Hunt: Hosni has put border and airport officials on alert for the painting as part of an aggressive public effort to recover the work. His ministry came under fire following the burglary after it was determined that only seven of the 43 security cameras were functioning, and that alarms in the museum were not operational. Hosni has said that he was unaware that the security system was compromised. “The museum would have been closed if it had been known the warning system was not working,” he told a local newspaper, according to Al Jazeera English. (Of course, Egyptian museums aren’t the only ones to be embarrassed by faulty alarm systems.) Read more at: http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/35547/chaos-follows-van-gogh-theft-in-cairo-a-brief-guide/
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