PHOTO: Meet Alice

Art installation "Alice" by Spanish artist Cristina Lucas is displayed in the Andalusian Centre of Contemporary Art in the Andalusian capital of Seville, southern Spain on April 10. (REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo)

Was there an Italian Monet?

Years before Impressionism — the influential Paris-based art movement — began, a similar style of painting capturing colourful impressions of light may have existed in Italy, according to a new exhibit.

The show at Paris' Orangery museum displays works from 1860s Florence with vivid, dappled light — in a strikingly similar way to famed painters like Claude Monet from the 1870s.

The movement was called "Macchiaioli," after the Italian for "stain," to evoke splashes of light in the painting.

"It's practically unknown around the world, but like the Impressionists they used the bright light of open air, contrasting shadows, and they wished to rebel against academic painting by going out and in the open air," said curator Beatrice Avanzi.

"The Macchiaioli: the Italian Impressionists?" show runs Wednesday through July 22.

-AP

Photographing our obsession with plastic surgery

Tiana. (All photos by Phil Toledano)

“(Plastic surgery) is the opposite of mortality. It is the denial of death,” says Phil Toledano.

The London-born, New York City-based photographer explores the world’s fascination with going under the knife in his series, “A new kind of beauty.”

Toledano, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and GQ, says what it means to look human will eventually change as more and more technologies and procedures to alter oneself will become readily available.

Greater and more severe enhancements in plastic surgery -- as seen in his photo series -- will become the new norm. People who opt for extreme plastic surgery procedures will be seen as normal, functioning individuals and not deemed freaks.

Change is already underway, he says.

While decades ago, people with piercings and tattoos were seen on the fringes of society; nowadays it seems everyone and their cousin has a piercing or tattoo. Piercings and tattoos are accepted -- and people display them proudly.

“These kinds of people that I’m shooting are utterly the vanguard of that evolution,” Toledano told me last week.

The look he wanted to go with for his series is somewhat based on Northern Renaissance artist Hans Holbein the Younger's paintings. The German painter is famous for his portraits of Henry VIII's court. 

"I thought it would be interesting to take that style and overlay it over this new kind of beauty I see evolving in our own contemporary culture."

Toledano's subjects wear little makeup and clothes.

“I didn’t want to take a sexy picture. I wanted to make a beautiful, dignified photograph of that person," he says.

More of Toledano’s work, including his moving "Days with my father" series, can be found here.

 

(Courtesy Phil Toledano)

Lorianna De Giorgio is the Star's foreign web editor. Follow her on Twitter: @ldegiorgio

Human rights and (real) human wrongs

A wounded English aviator is taken prisoner by German soldiers during World War I in this picture taken by an unknown photographer. Photo reproduction from the Black Star Collection.

Are you off to the movies this weekend, or taking in a film at home?  Is it a zombie flick filled with mock-mouldy human flesh, or a blow-‘em-away epic with bloody shoot-outs and special FX car crashes?

The aptly described top-grossing movies of the past year, unsurprisingly, include the latest vampire Twilight Saga installment (“domestic violence in disguise"), and superhero slugfest The Avengers. It’s all rated as entertainment, and shocks no one over the age of five. Vicious videogames fill in the blanks when the last movie frame fades.

Many, however, shrink from the unglamorous violence of the real world. Exhibitions of photos and videos of deadly actual events – bloody repression, slaughter and genocide – make few dents in the box offices of North America.

But these are happening every day, in every country. On the ground. Now. And in the not-so-distant past.

For those who are ready to come to grips with political struggle, racism, human suffering and the ethics of photographing and depicting those images, Ryerson University has an exhibition for you.

Human Rights Human Wrongs is on all weekend at the Ryerson Image Centre from noon to 5 p.m., and until April 14 (except Monday). It features 300 original prints from the famed Black Star Collection. They encourage viewers to meditate on the humanity and inhumanity of living through, and covering, events most can only imagine.

And, yes, there’s a warning: “contains photographs that may be disturbing to viewers due to the graphic or violent nature of the subject matter.”

Just like life.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. She has collaborated on two Emmy-winning films based on her work, as well as Devil’s Bargain, on the international arms trade, with filmmaker Shelley Saywell.      

VIDEO: Flash mob recreates Rembrandt's 'The Night Watch' for museum reopening

A flash mob recreated Rembrandt van Rijn's masterpiece "The Night Watch" at a local mall in Breda earlier this month to promote the upcoming reopening of the Rijksmuseum, the National Museum of the Netherlands. A group of actors recreated the "The Night Watch" scene, which portrays a company of Amsterdam volunteer militiamen. The massive painting — 4.35 metres wide and 3.79 metres high — will hang at the end of the museum's central gallery, just as it did in the original 1885 design by architect Pierre Cuypers. The painting's placement reflects Dutch history, a crowning achievement of the Golden Age when the Netherlands was a major naval power and Amsterdam was one of the world's most influential and wealthy cities. In a media preview Thursday ahead of the April 13 reopening, Rijksmuseum director Wim Pijbes said the far-reaching improvements to the museum will justify the decade long, $480 million makeover. "It's totally changed, renewed, improved, radiant — everything is new," he said. The Rijksmuseum houses the largest collection of Dutch artwork, with many treasures from the country's 17th-century Golden Age and beyond. From hand-painted details on every pillar, to newly laid mosaic floors and stained glass windows, to revitalizing the displays themselves, every part of the museum has been restored or rethought. Pijbes said that almost never has a national museum undergone such a far-reaching facelift, with every single one of the 8,000 artifacts and pieces of art on display coming to rest in a different spot — with one exception: "The Night Watch" itself.   - AP A woman looks at the "The Night Watch" by Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum the Amsterdam on April 4. The Rijksmuseum, after a decade of rebuilding, renovation and restoration, will open to the general public on April 13. (REUTERS/Michael Kooren)

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PHOTOS: Inside Rome's wax museum

PHOTOS: From destroyed weapons to musical instruments

Mexican artist Pedro Reyes holds one of his musical instruments sculpted from recycled guns at the Lisson Gallery on Tuesday in London. Reyes received 6,700 destroyed weapons from the Mexican government from which he sculpted two groups of instruments. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

The first, a series titled "Imagine", is an orchestra of 50 instruments, from flutes to string and percussion instruments, designed to be played live. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

The second, "Disarm", is an installation of mechanical musical instruments, which can either be automated or played live by an individual operator using a laptop computer or midi keyboard. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

A guitar made from recycled gun parts is shown at Reyes' "Disarm" exhibition. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Tom Lamb plays a musical instrument made from recycled gun parts at the Lisson Gallery. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Musical instruments made from recycled gun parts are played at the Lisson Gallery. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

PHOTO: The art of sleeping

Actress Tilda Swinton performs the art of sleeping in her one-person piece called "The Maybe," in New York's Museum of Modern Art, Monday. In "The Maybe," first performed at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1995, Swinton lies sleeping in a glass box for the day. The exhibit will move locations within the museum every time Swinton performs. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Art looted by Nazis returns to Jewish owners

A man looks at a poster reading "Census of Jews" displayed in an exhibition at the Shoah Memorial in Paris, Feb. 12. The French state prepares to give back seven stolen Nazi-era paintings - four of which are in the Louvre - to two Jewish families, after a decade-long tug of war. It ends years of struggle for the two families, whose claims were all validated by the French prime minister last year. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon)

The French government has announced that seven paintings seized by the Nazis from Jewish collectors and art dealers in France during World War II are to be returned to their rightful owners.

Three of the paintings are kept in the illustrious Louvre, while four others hang in French national museums.

They were part of a massive haul of 100,000 art works stolen in France by occupying Nazi forces during WWII at the behest of leader and failed art student Adolf Hitler.

The return of the paintings marks welcome progress in a decades-long battle waged by the descendants of the Jewish owners whose collections were plundered during the occupation.

The French government recovered about 60,000 art works following the war, of which about 45,000 were returned to their rightful owners, and another 10,000 were sold on the open market. But at the time, ownership of the balance could not be traced – many of the owners had perished in the Holocaust – and the search for their descendants effectively ceased in 1950.

But Puerto Rican journalist and author Hector Feliciano ignited an explosive debate in France in 1995 with the publication of his book, “The Lost Museum,” in which he listed the looted art then hanging in French museums and accused the government of not doing enough to track the art works’ proper inheritors.

The French government had “stonewalled” Feliciano's research at the time and he was forced to turn to U.S. archives to complete his book.

The French government finally relented and staged an exhibition of more than 1,000 of 2,058 pieces then housed in its national collections.

Six of the seven paintings to be returned – all 17^th and18^th century works with religious themes – will be returned to 82-year-old American Thomas Selldorf, a grandson of businessman and art collector Richard Neumann, who first fled Vienna for Paris, then Spain, before finally landing in Cuba.

The other painting by Dutch artist Pieter Jansz van Asch will go back to the family of Czech banker Josef Wiener who died en route to a Nazi concentration camp in 1942.

The London Times today reports that British officials say they are ready to accept new claims for looted art in its collections. Arts Council England’s senior policy adviser Gerry McQuillan said a British panel had already returned seven looted paintings since 2001.

Elsewhere around the world descendants of the rightful owners continue their pursuit.

Bill Schiller has held bureau postings for the Toronto Star in Johannesburg, Berlin, London and Beijing. He is a NNA and Amnesty International Award winner, and a Harvard Nieman Fellow from the class of '06. Follow him on Twitter @wschiller

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PHOTO: A 'Peliqueiro' in Spain

A carnival reveller dressed as a "Peliqueiro" is pictured in a street in Spain's northwestern village of Laza Feb. 12. "Peliqueiros", or ancient tax collectors, pursued villagers through the streets ringing their cowbells and hitting villagers with their sticks. (Miguel Vidal/Reuters)

PHOTOS: Michelangelo exhibit to open

This image provided by the Muscarelle Museum of Art shows a drawing by Renaissance artist Michelangelo of a plan for the church of San Giovanni del Florentini in Rome that is on display at the museum in Williamsburg, Va. The image is one of 25 drawings by Michelangelo beginning a two-city U.S. exhibition in Virginia on Saturday, including some works never before seen in the U.S. and many that offer a glimpse into the mind of the master and the tumultuous times in which he lived. (AP Photo/Muscarelle Museum of Art)

Michelangelo's drawing of Cleopatra that is on display at the museum in Williamsburg, Va.  (AP Photo/Muscarelle Museum of Art)

Michelangelo's drawing of Madonna and Child that is on display at the museum in Williamsburg, Va. (AP Photo/Muscarelle Museum of Art)