This exhibition showcases the heterogeneity of French “from the motif” or “from nature” drawing in the first half of the 19th century, with a particular focus on leading figures of French art (Delacroix, Corot, Chassériau, Valenciennes and Daubigny), as well as lesser-known individuals such as the engraver Bléry. Organized with special support from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the cooperation of the Musée d’Orsay, the exhibition puts on display over 100 drawings and etchings, and some thirty sketchbooks—the “plein-air’ painter’s quintessential tool. The practice of drawing “en plein air” or “in the open air”, “from the motif”, first recorded in 17th-century France (and Europe), became common in the 18th century, and was considered an integral part of every young artist’s training in the 19th. The constantly evolving art movement eventually came to be seen as exceptionally important in the histo

Lacoste Gallery introduces the celebrated Chinese ceramic artist and painter Bai Ming to the USA. The exhibition BAI MING: SOLO November 11 – December 2, 2017 features over 50 porcelain works, paintings and drawings. Bai Ming is an artist with an illustrious art career in Asia and Europe. His recent successful retrospectives were at the Museum of Asian Art, Paris and the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisbon. In 1998, he exhibited alongside Picasso in a two person exhibition at Taipei International Art Fair titled “Vallauris in France & Jingdezhen in China”. Born near Jingdezhen, the birthplace of porcelain, Mr. Bai has contributed to the renewal and revival of contemporary Chinese ceramics while introducing it to a new audience worldwide. His paintings on clay are abstractions with free brush strokes. He uses dots and lines on his works referencing western art thus bridging the two cultur

Rarely have more humorous paintings been produced than in the Dutch Golden Age. Naughty children, stupid peasants, foolish dandies and befuddled drunks, quack doctors, pimps, procuresses, lazy maids and lusty ladies – they figure in large numbers in Golden Age masterpieces. The Art of Laughter: Humour in the Golden Age presents the first ever overview of humour in seventeenth-century painting. The exhibition runs from 11 November 2017 to 18 March 2018 in the Frans Hals Museum. Frans Hals is often called ‘the master of the laugh’. More than any other painter in the Golden Age, he was able to bring a vitality to his portraits that made it appear as if his models could just step out of the past into the present. Hals was one of the few painters in the seventeenth century who dared portray his figures – often common folk – with a hearty laugh and bared teeth. Merriment and jokes are prominent features in his genre paintings; arti