1 of 5. A visitor to the Justice and Police Museum looks at paintings that are part of the exhibition titled ''Wicked Women'' in Sydney February 13, 2013. The paintings in award-winning Australian artist Rosemary Valadon’s latest exhibition, ''Wicked Women,'' feature femmes fatale in the style of classic film noir movie posters and pulp fiction covers but the faces are of prominent Australian women. The models for the 17 oil paintings in the exhibition include journalists, lawyers, a crown prosecutor, designers, actresses and three female staff members at Sydney's Justice and Police Museum, where the exhibition is being held. Picture taken February 13, 2013.

SYDNEY | Fri Feb 15, 2013 3:59pm EST

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A buxom woman in a low-cut red dress brandishes a pistol, her finger poised to pull the trigger, but a closer look at the painting reveals the woman is model-turned-novelist Tara Moss.

In another painting a woman in a red beret and tight yellow, slit skirt with one hand on her hip and the other holding a cigarette is in fact one of Australia's senior crown prosecutors, Margaret Cunneen.

The paintings in award-winning Australian artist Rosemary Valadon's latest exhibition, "Wicked Women," feature femmes fatale in the style of classic film noir movie posters and pulp fiction covers but the faces are of prominent Australian women.

The models for the 17 oil paintings in the exhibition include journalists, lawyers, a crown prosecutor, designers, actresses and three female staff members at Sydney's Justice and Police Museum, where the exhibition is being held.

"I think that Rosemary was particularly interested in the ideas around women's sexual 'wickedness,' and that was part of what she was interested in exploring," curator Nerida Campbell told Reuters.

The paintings by Valadon took two years to complete and use bold colors and strong lines that produce an almost 3D effect in some cases.

While some of the models had time for multiple sittings, others had as little as half an hour for Valadon to make a quick sketch. Replicas were made of original guns and weapons displayed at the museum for the women to use as they posed.

One room is devoted to the paintings themselves, while the other features sketches. A recording of Valadon's voice leads visitors through her creative process, from photography and modeling to sketching in charcoals and pencil, and ultimately the finished work.

The models relished the chance to show another side to their character, at least for a couple of days.

""Wicked Women" is an exciting series of works because it explores the perception of hot-blooded women in an era when women were expected to be more demure and compliant than they are today," said senior crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen.

"These women, in my view, were portrayed as sassy, sexy and impulsive to the point of dangerousness. I think the work evokes a passionate, gutsy and high-spirited woman who has been strengthened, through hardship, to ultimate resilience."

The public response to the exhibition, which runs until late May, has been good, Campbell said, drawing viewers whose interest ranges from the painting style to simple curiosity about the famous women themselves.

"I think what people find interesting is what Rosemary wanted to do -- subvert the stereotypes and allow modern, independent strong women to imprint their personality on these more sexist original works," she said.

(Reporting by Pauline Askin, editing by Elaine Lies and Belinda Goldsmith)

View the original article here

1 of 6. People stand in front of a portrait of Peter the Great at the Russians and Germans exhibition at the New Museum in Berlin, December 2, 2012.

BERLIN | Wed Dec 12, 2012 12:20pm EST

BERLIN (Reuters) - From beeswax and birch bark to war booty and gas pipelines, an exhibition now showing in Berlin chronicles the long, colorful and sometimes tragic history of relations between Germany and Russia, Europe's two most populous nations.

The "Russians and Germans" exhibition at the Neues Museum focuses on cultural and trade contacts between the two peoples stretching back to the 10th century and largely skirts the political controversies that still dog their relationship.

"The aim of the exhibition is to emphasize the continuity of intensive relations in the areas of politics, economy and culture," said Steffen Zarutzki of the agency that operates Berlin's state museums.

"It has been very successful and has drawn plenty of visitors, about a quarter of them Russian speakers."

The exhibition, sponsored by Germany's biggest energy group E.ON, is one of the main cultural events in a "year of Russia" in Germany that runs until 2013 and is paralleled by a "year of Germany" in Russia.

It comprises some 600 works of art, including paintings, books, costumes and weapons loaned by Russian museums. Arranged chronologically, it starts with the mediaeval Baltic merchants of the Hanseatic League and ends after the fall of the Berlin Wall and withdrawal of Soviet troops from German soil.

In one of the first rooms, a large wooden panel dating from the 14th century shows bearded Russians in tall hats and smocks collecting beeswax and hunting squirrels and sable for their furs and then presenting the products to German merchants.

Germans paid for the furs, wax, timber and grains with wines, metals and luxury goods - an exchange not unlike today's trade flows which see Russia selling natural resources such as gas and oil to buy German cars and other consumer goods.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Primitive dictionaries with tables of vocabulary show the first efforts of German traders to learn Russian.

The explanatory labels of the exhibition tells the visitor that the word for 'German' in Russian - 'Nemtsy' - stems from the word 'mute', signaling the incomprehension with which early Slavs greeted visitors from the west.

Russians and Germans have an easier time understanding each other these days. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in Soviet-dominated East Germany, has good Russian while Russian President Vladimir Putin, stationed in the 1980s as a KGB agent in East Germany, speaks fluent German.

But there is still ample scope for misunderstanding and disagreement, as shown in Merkel's latest trip to Moscow where she and Putin clashed over Russia's human rights record even as they signed lucrative business deals.

Underlining the often wide cultural gulf between the two peoples, German traders living in Moscow would be required to live in a specially designated part of town to prevent them infecting local people with 'dangerous' ideas - a custom that has more recent echoes in the Cold War when Soviet citizens were discouraged from mixing with Western visitors.

But illustrating the rich cultural interaction always there in the background, the exhibition also tells of the Russian Orthodox archbishop of Novgorod who commissioned German architects to build a typically German red brick palace near his cathedral in the city's fortress, or 'kremlin'.

The exhibition recounts how German scholars and explorers helped to open up and map the vast territories of Siberia, it stresses the German origins of such famous Russian rulers as Catherine the Great and the contribution of German companies like Siemens to the industrialization of the Russian Empire.

Writers from Dostoevsky to Nabokov and artists like Kandinsky flocked to Germany at different times to escape political oppression at home - or simply lured by casinos and spas. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, hundreds of thousands of Russians have come in search of better jobs and salaries.

"The Russian soul and the German mind are clearly nearer to each other than is sometimes claimed," German President Joachim Gauck, a former pastor from the communist east, said at the opening of "Russians and Germans".

Urging both peoples to look beyond the devastating two world wars of the 20th century in which they fought on opposing sides, Gauck said there was much in their relationship to be proud of.

"In the shared history of Russia and Germany the horrors of the past will not have the last word," he said.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

View the original article here

Pablo Picasso's ''The Charnel House'' Paris 1944-45; dated 1945, an oil and charcoal on canvas is seen in this undated handout photo released to Reuters on October 4, 2012.

NEW YORK | Thu Oct 4, 2012 5:53pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pablo Picasso may be best known for his Blue and Rose Periods and Cubism but the Spanish artist also used black and white in his works, many of which will be shown in a new exhibition opening on Friday at New York's Guggenheim Museum.

"Picasso Black and White," which runs through January 23 and includes 118 paintings, sculptures and works on paper from 1904 to 1971, focuses on Picasso's exploration of the use of the two colors.

"This is the first exhibition that examines his continuous use of the black and white palette throughout his career, therefore we think it is a ground-breaking exhibition," said Richard Armstrong, the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.

"We think this offers new insights into his creative character," he added.

From "La Repasseuse" a stark, somber 1904 oil on canvas painting of an angular woman ironing to "The Kiss," a work in dark gray and black that was completed decades later, the exhibition runs in chronological order up the curving ramps of the museum.

It includes works that have never been seen in public before and more than 30 will be on view in the United States for the first time.

Carmen Gimenez, the curator of the exhibition, said the minimal use of color in Picasso's works in the exhibition showed his focus on line, form, drawings and tones, which is evident in "The Kitchen," a 1948 painting of angles, circles, curves, and varying shades of gray.

"His interest in on drawing and on the line," she explained in an interview.

Even in his Blue and Rose periods, Gimenez said black, white and gray is a recurrent motif. The lack of color, she added, enabled Picasso to manage complicated paintings such as his black and white masterpiece "The Milliner's Workshop," which is on loan for the exhibition from the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

"The Charnel House," a jumble of corpses with a primitive quality, which was reportedly inspired by newspaper photographs of war, is another major work in the show, along with "The Maids of Honor," the largest of his 44 variations of Diego Velazquez's "Las Meninas" which Picasso painted in California.

"Black and white tended to be used in ambitious and complicated compositions," Gimenez explained.

She added that Picasso's monochromatic tones are rooted in Paleolithic cave drawings and were used to explore the works of other great Spanish artists such as Velazques, El Greco and Francisco de Goya, who also used black and gray.

"Gray was an essential part of the classical tradition," she said.

"Head of a Horse, Sketch for Guernica" is another work of art featured in the show. It is a study for arguably Picasso's most famous painting "Guernica," his reaction to the massive air raid by the Germans in 1937 on the Basque town of Guernica.

After its run at the Guggenheim, the show will move to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

View the original article here