Jasper Johns at IVAM

A Major retrospective of the works of Jasper Johns, many on public display for the first time, are on show at IVAM, Valencia's trailblazing modern art museum. About a hundred works, consisting of pieces that span fifty years of one of the most enthralling and hallowed careers in the world of contemporary art. It includes paintings from American and European museums (National Gallery of Art, Washington; MFAH, Houston; Whitney Museum, New York; The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica; Milwaukee Art Museum; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate, London, among others), and from private collections which show the evolution of an exceptional oeuvre. The presence of these works is completed by a substantial loan from the artist which includes, among other pieces, the largest sculpture that he has made, created in 2007 and never previously exhibited.
Many of the works – a mixture of all techniques – which feature in this exhibition focus on the numbers and letters that have appeared recurrently in his work during more than half a century. Symbols of non-verbal communication are present in his paintings, prints and sculptures. In a process based on repetition, the artist shows the importance of the constant development of thematic registers.
Jasper Johns was born in 1930, in Allendale, South Carolina. He is unquestionably one of the foremost artists in the world of contemporary art. He is a tireless searcher who from the outset reacted against Lyrical Abstraction and Abstract Expressionism and remained faithful to a kind of aestheticism, drawing his inspiration from the history of art. Driving back the limits of art, he has included his own roots and those of humanity in his work, together with his knowledge and his fondness for the past. To quote a reflection made by an art historian, he is one of the last American painters who has retained “the aroma of the old Europe”. Jasper Johns is recognised now as an indisputable, emblematic figure of art, and his work, which played a decisive role in the birth of Pop Art and its consequences, also lies at the origin of many other innovations in the world of art.
Well worth a visit.

Frontiers at the IVAM in Valencia

Wednesday I had an email inviting me to a press conference for the major new IVAM exhibition CONFINES/FRONTIERS. I had heard about it several weeks ago when a lady from New York emailed me to tell me she was visiting Valencia with her family to witness the opening of which her son son was one of the artists in the Robert Wilson section. They all wanted to know what else they should see whilst visiting. I emailed the lady back with architectural and monumental information and asked her to expand a little on this exhibition. I got a very polite thanks and very little additional information on the show. It turns out that the exhibition is to celebrate 20 years of IVAM. It is a major undertaking as it fills four of the main galleries, in Consuelo Ciscar's words 'a risky undertaking'
What did we make of it all? click the headline to find out more.

Flamenco Jazz At the IVAM

Valencian saxophonist and composer Kiko Berenguer heads a strong group of jazz musicians tomorrow 24 April at 11:00pm at IVAM for a session of Jazz Flamenco. Kiko Berenguer (sax and direction), Rafael Vargas " The Chino" (singer), Juan Carlos Gómez (flamenco guitar), Rogerio Campas (bass), Rafa Villalba (percussion) and Julia Gominelli (percussion) give the free performance of music and music from the films with a flamenco jazz twist.
24 April, 11:00pm
IVAM Centre Julio González
C/ Guillem de Castro 118 – Valencia

International Book Day, BookCrossing and IVAM Valencia

Tomorrow 23 April, is International Book Day (a symbolic date for world literature for on this date in 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died), IVAM, along with 26 Spanish museums and centers of contemporary art, will share the experience of bookcrossing, or book liberation. More than 2,000 books related to different artistic disciplines 'released' ready for you to capture.
For those of you unfamiliar with BookCrossing, it is, in the site's own words, "an earth-friendly way to share your books, clear your shelves, and conserve precious resources at the same time. Through our own unique method of recycling reads, BookCrossers give life to books. A book registered on BookCrossing is ready for adventure.
Leave it on a park bench, a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym -- anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel. Track the book's journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person."

All IVAM's released books will be credited with BookCrossing labels, will contain the instructions necessary to the 'capturer' and will be registered in the page Web www.bookcrossing-spain.com, where the readers will be able to indicate the place where they found each book and the place they released it.
IVAM say that the object of this initiative is the diffusion of knowledge on contemporary art.
More by clicking the headline

From Jaume 1 to Today

Francisco Camps, President of the Comunitat Valenciana With The Artists and Consuelo Ciscar , Curator of Ivam, and Organisers of the Exhibition


Francisco Camps, President of the Comunitat Valenciana


Francisco Camps, President of the Comunitat Valenciana


Camps walks among the singing tubes


Camps and the Artisits in front of Manolo Valdés' Sculpture Libros

Camps with Roig






A new exhibition was opened last night by Francisco Camps , the president of the Valencian Community. It was a glittering affair with lots of press coverage and a Who's who of the art world in attendance. The exhibition, which runs from now until the 20 July features new works by 3 Valencian Artists, Manolo Valdés, Miguel Navarro and José Antonio Orts and Mallorquin, Benardí Roig.
It's an interesting show. We particularly liked the 'Libros' By Manolo Valdés.

Josep Renau - An exhibition at Octubre

Las Arenas, the beach of Valencia
War Poster
Photomontage
Picasso's Guernica - commissioned by Benau for the 1937 World's Fair in Paris

There is a fascinating exhibition at the Octubre Gallery/Arts Centre (C/Sant Ferran 12, 46001 Valencia), Josep Renau is someone you will probably never have heard of directly.

Born in 1907 in Valencia he was an Illustrator, Muralist and, in his latter years made a series of surreal photo montages.

His early years were devoted to magazine and poster illustration, beautiful graphic works. He joined the communist party in 1931 and at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, began producing images for the Republican side. He became director of the museum of Bellas Artes and his main work there was to safeguard the art treasures throughout the Civil War (It is said that not one Art treasure was lost during the war) and it was he that commissioned what is arguably Picasso's most famous work 'Guernica' a mural which decorated the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris and depicts the bombing of the town of Guernica and was Picasso's protest against Franco and Fascism.

He fled, with thousands of others across the border into France when Barcelona fell and was interned in an Algerian Refugee Camp until he was able to get a visa to work in Mexico in 1939 where he worked on Spanish magazines and murals.

In 1958 he moved to Berlin and continued to paint, make murals and photo montages. He lived in Berlin till his death in 1982, though after Franco's death in 1976 he was to visit Valencia several times and bequeathed his works to the Josep Benau Foundation which is now housed at Valencia's Modern Art Museum IVAM.

This is a great opportunity to see some fine works by this fascinating man. Unless we missed them on our visit some of his earlier Valencian Magazine work or Posters, though they appear in the leaflet of the exhibition. The Centre has captions and information that is only in Castellano/Catalan and Valenciano. It is a nice space and has a bar/café where people were enjoying what looked to be very good food.

Carles Santos Live At IVAM Valencia

Carles Santos, multitalented pianist, composer, designer, played at IVAM on tuesday night - stunning performance!

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Haz click el título....

S-H-O-E-S

It is nice to have somewhere to go of a Sunday evening. I met up with Gooru and headed to the IVAM yesterday (you just can't drag him away from the place these days!) to catch a shoe show and a symphony overture. On the way he tried to show me the stuffed turkey, but it had gone - lucky he got the photographic evidence then! The Banda de la Federación de Sociedades Musicales de Valencia took up the whole of the entrance hall to the museum as around two hundred onlookers stood to listen to a piece especially composed for IVAM's 18th birthday. Written by composer, musician, professor and director Ferrer Ferrán, it was quite beautiful and the setting and acoustics were ideal - the rain coming down outside made us feel extra cosy indoors and all the more privileged to witness this special performance alongside Rita Barberà, Consuelo Ciscar and other familiar faces.



We stayed around afterwards to see the inauguration of the Julio González' life works exhibition and then for a parade down the catwalk of an unusual collection of shoes and sandals by Álvaro Carpena. - from bejewelled and platformed to leopard printed and stripy to flat and frumpy. The models came down the spectacular concrete and marble staircase of the IVAM and down onto a catwalk, accompanied by the orchestra playing the piece IVAM for a second time. We were then showed a (rather disappointing) cake and offered champagne. I passed, I was nursing a rather heavy hangover and was not on for hair of the dog, so headed outside instead to admire the new scrolling LED lights imbedded in the steps up to the museum and the images projected on the front.
Tonight at 11pm Josele Santiago will be singing songs from his new album Golondrinas. All events during the 18th anniversary celebrations are free to the public.
©ANITA DARLING
Read her great WOMAN column by clicking on this entry's title.

IVAM's Birthday, A ballet and a turkey!

On my way this morning to the first of the celebration performances for IVAM's (Institute Valenciana de Art Moderno) 18th birthday, I saw this stuffed turkey in the street, abandoned. So of course I took a photo of it, because chances are, without physical evidence (and, no, I wasn't going to pick it up and give it a good home) No one would believe me.






Anyway, I saw the ballet 'Laboratorio de la Velocidad', all jerky hand and arm movements and a lot of jumping and falling over, and kept thinking the stuffed bird was a sign....

Tonight, by the way, it's shoes as art, 7.30pm, see you there?

IVAM celebrates its Eighteenth Birthday with a week of activities starting on Sunday 18th February

The Modern Art Museum IVAM is celebrating its 18th birthday with music, dance, video art, jazz, perfomance, conferences,cinema - and even shoes!.
It promises to be a very interesting week, and it all starts this Sunday 18th when the week kicks off with Laboratorio de la Velocidad, a dance piece.
There's a premiere performance of a symphonic work especially commissioned by IVAM and entitled IVAM. Carles Santos is performing his work No al No.
for more info and the full programme click on the headline above