ARTzine online

Helen Frankenthaler, Abstract Painter Dies at 83

2011-12-27T11:40:00.001-05:00

Helen Frankenthaler exhibited her work for six decades. She created large scale paintings which she began to exhibit in 1950. Her career was launched in 1952 with the exhibition of "Mountains and Sea". In 2001, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She died on Tuesday at her home in Darien, Conn. She was 83.

The New Inquiry: Occupy the mind

2011-12-01T08:16:00.001-05:00

"Thinkers and writers of our generation face an unprecedented set of cultural realities. The growing supply of career academics has flooded the university job market, and 21^st century technologies have thrown traditional media into crisis. Although the future of higher education and print remains obscure, these cultural sea changes have yielded one definite side effect: an abundance of young writers and thinkers resolved to pursue a public intellectual life for its own sake—a pursuit ordered and enabled by Internet technology.

The New Inquiry is a space for discussion that aspires to enrich cultural and public life by putting all available resources—both digital and material—toward the promotion and exploration of ideas."

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

2011-11-21T17:50:00.001-05:00

“Ziggurat” by Stephen O’Connor

2011-10-08T21:58:00.000-04:00

"The Minotaur was a novice of arc and swell and dip, a new-minted connoisseur of smooth and tender and sway. That little snippet of bird-peep that entered the new girl’s voice whenever she got excited, or when she thought something she had done was stupid—he wanted to put that in a box, tie it up with a leather thong, and keep it always around his neck."

— Stephen O’Connor, “Ziggurat.”

LISTEN:

Cy Twombly died Tuesday in Rome.

2011-07-05T20:20:00.000-04:00

American artist Cy Twombly died Tuesday in Rome. He was 83.

Twombly's paintings blur the line between drawing and painting. Many of his best-known paintings of the late 1960s are reminiscent of a school blackboard on which someone has practiced cursive "e"s. His paintings of the late 1950s, early 1960s might be reminiscent of long term accumulation of bathroom graffiti. Twombly had at this point discarded painting figurative, representational subject-matter, citing the line or smudge — each mark with its own history — as its proper subject.

Bye Baby Good Bye...

2011-07-03T15:58:00.000-04:00

This weekend, the world-class art collection belonging to the Barnes Foundation will be on display at its longtime home in the Philadelphia suburbs for the last time. Next spring, one of America's great collections of modern and impressionist art will be housed at a new building in downtown Philadelphia.

So for a few final days, art lovers from around the country are paying their respects to the old gallery. Those who love the Barnes Foundation say that even though it includes hundreds of paintings by Matisse, Picasso, Cezanne, Renoir and others, it's more than just an art collection. For some, the place itself is a work of art.

INSPIRING: Music in the Attic

2011-05-31T00:36:00.000-04:00

Wore It Deep (The Tree Ring) from Destin Daniel Cretton on Vimeo.

PAPER DREAMS

2011-05-30T23:56:00.001-04:00

Paper Dreams from Kenneth Onulak on Vimeo.

AMERICA: NOW AND HERE

2011-05-30T23:16:00.001-04:00

The project, called “America: Now and Here,” will begin with a nonvehicular preview before the specially outfitted trucks are built, setting up first in Kansas City, Mo., in a temporary exhibition space that will open on May 6. The show will move on to similar spaces in Detroit in July and Chicago in October.

Then in fall 2012, the plan is for six trailer trucks to hit the road, stopping in towns and smaller cities that have yet to be selected, where the convoy will set up like a miniature state fair, swapping the Tilt-a-Whirls and show pigs for paintings and photographs by artists like Ed Ruscha,Susan Rothenberg, Gregory Crewdson, Laurie Simmons and David Salle; short, conversational plays by writers likeEdward Albee and Marsha Norman; and music by artists like Lou Reed, Philip Glass and Roseanne Cash. Four of the truck trailers will partially unfold and link together to create a 3,300-square-foot gallery space, and two more will contain materials for a covered pavilion and a screen and seating area to show short films by documentary makers like Lauren Greenfield and Mitch McCabe.

2011-05-23T17:35:00.000-04:00

In the '70s and '80s, David Michael Kennedy lived in New York City, shooting portraits of music icons like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Muddy Waters for magazine and album covers. He moved to New Mexico in 1986, where he focused on Native American culture. Today he lives in a 200-year-old adobe house in the tiny agricultural village of El Rito in northern New Mexico.

But for two years beginning in 2004, Kennedy wandered back roads photographing preachers, crawfishermen, RV-ers, buffaloes, longhorns, cowboys and mystics.

He and his then girlfriend, Heather Howard, and a res dog named Henry Crow Dog packed up in a 1959 Airstream trailer outfitted with a wet darkroom. He took all his photographs with a handmade 4x5 camera using Polaroid positive/negative film, which he developed in the trailer then made contact prints using the archaic platinum palladium process prized by collectors and museums.

The Spirit of the Man

2011-05-22T12:17:00.000-04:00

A group of writers wanted a monument to Balzac immediately after his death in 1850. Rodin spent years developing the concept. Challenged in finding an appropriate representation of Balzac given the author's obese physique, Rodin produced many studies, portraits, full-length figures in the nude, wearing a frock coat and in a robe. The sculpture shows Balzac cloaked in his robe, looking forcefully into the distance with deeply gouged features.

Rodin wanted to show Balzac at the moment of conceiving a work — to express courage, labor and creative struggle. When Balzac was exhibited in 1898, the critics had a field day. The writers rejected it and the press published parodies. Yet art critics have come to accept that Balzac is one of Rodin's masterpieces.

A newly created statue honoring Pope John Paul the II, has ignited similar controversy. This time, it is the Vatican that has objections over the likeness of the statue created by the artist, Oliviero Rainaldi, depicting the pontiff as if he is opening his cloak to embrace the faithful (top-left.) The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said the statue bears "only a distant resemblance to the pope." Some Romans and tourists have even commented that the likeness of the statue looks more like the dictator Benito Mussolini.

The giant artwork sits outside Rome's Termini Train Station. The city noted that Vatican culture officials had seen the sketch and had approved it. The Vatican Spokesman, Rev. Frederico Lombardi, confirmed that the sketch had "received a positive opinion by the culture commission" He could not say what happened between the sketch and the final result.

"There's an ancient saying, said Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno, to APTN, "Vox populi, vox dei," using the Latin for "Voice of the people, voice of God." "if public opinion consolidates around a negative opinion we'll have to take that into consideration."

2011-05-18T07:56:00.000-04:00

In 1964, Italian fishermen found a bronze, barnacle-covered statue of a Greek athlete in the Adriatic Sea. The statue was buried in a cabbage field, hidden in a priest's bathtub and smuggled out of Italy. It re-emerged on the European art market in the mid-1970s; the Getty Museum purchased it for $3.95 million in 1977.

In award-winning reporting for the Los Angeles Times, journalists Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino exposed the dramatic story of the Getty's underhanded art dealings led by their former antiquities curator, Marion True.

But the good news is that the Getty has become a leader in a series of genuine museum reforms aimed at correcting past mistakes. Its leadership has paved the way to a new era of cooperation.

"The Getty takes loans from Italy now," "There's no more this idea we have to possess the art. We can take long-term loans and actually serve the patrons by showing more art and kind of rotating it through our collection." Frammolino said.

Chasing Aphrodite
By Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino
Hardcover, 384 pages
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
List Price: $28

Wally's aria from La Wally

2011-04-28T08:24:00.000-04:00

Ah well then! I shall go far away

Like the echo of the pious church-bell goes away,

There somewhere in the white snow;

There amongst the clouds of gold,

There where hope, hope

Is regret, is regret, is sorrow!

O from my mother's cheerful house

La Wally is about to go away from you, from you!

Quite far away, and perhaps to you,

And perhaps to you, will never more return,

Nor ever more see you again!

Never again, never again!

I will go away alone and far,

There, somewhere in the white snow, I shall go,

I will go away alone and far

And amongst the clouds of gold!

Ah well then! I shall go far away

Just like the echo of the pious church-bell goes away,

There somewhere in the white snow;

There amongst the clouds of gold,

There where hope, hope

Is regret, is regret, is sorrow!

O from my mother's cheerful house

La Wally is about to go away from you, from you!

Quite far away, and perhaps to you,

And perhaps to you, will never more return,

Nor ever more see you again!

Never again, never again!

I shall go away alone and far,

Like the echo of the pious church-bell goes away,

There, somewhere in the white snow, I shall go,

I'll go away alone and far

And amongst the clouds of gold!

Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964-1977

2011-04-27T07:32:00.000-04:00

Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964-1977

Blinky Palermo (born Peter Schwartze) continually expanded the definition of painting throughout his career. The exhibition reflects this progression, following a loose chronology based on his four main bodies of work.

Though long celebrated throughout Europe, the influential postwar painter Blinky Palermo (German, b. Leipzig, 1943; d. Maldives, 1977) has mostly escaped America’s notice. This exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of his work in the United States.

February 24, 2011 to May 15, 2011

BEING THERE.... Virtually

2011-04-12T21:45:00.001-04:00

“Art on Paper” is an annual show at the Maryland Federation of Art and typically receives the most submissions for their exhibits. This year, there were 1,100 entries, meaning only about seven percent were selected. The works employ everything from etching to collage and are in a wide range of genres.

Since only a quarter of the artists are from Maryland, many haven’t been able to visit the gallery. The virtual tour has come in handy for them, too. It offers a 360 degree view of the exhibit with information and close up photographs of each work.

PICASSO: GUERNICA 3D

2011-04-11T23:02:00.000-04:00

ugustins was often visited

During the 1940’s Picasso’s studio on the rue des Grands-Augustins was often visited by German officers. On one of their raids a Gestapo officer found a postcard of “Guernica,” Picasso’s 1937 lament for the Basque town bombed by the Luftwaffe.

“Did you do this?” asked the German.

“No, you did!” replied Picasso. one of their raids a Gestapo officer f

Friedrich Nietzsche: der Wille zur Macht

2011-04-10T12:21:00.000-04:00

"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? ... All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.... The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth.... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss ... what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end."

NO PRIVACY? ..live feed of a bald eagle

2011-04-08T14:22:00.000-04:00

Live Broadcast by Ustream.TV

The Raptor Resource Project brings you the Decorah Eagles from atop their tree at the fish hatchery in Decorah, Iowa.

The live video feed is streamed online 24/7. At night an infrared light provides night vision to viewers through the cam. Infrared light is not visible to eagles, they do not see it or know it is there.

ART HK

2011-04-08T01:07:00.000-04:00

ART HK 11 will take place from 26-29 May 2011.

ART HK is held annually in May at the purpose built Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre overlooking the Victoria Harbour. In 2010 the Fair welcomed 155 of the world’s leading galleries from 29 countries and an audience of over 46,000 (up 60% on 2009). Exhibitors included the most important galleries from the Asia Pacific region and leading galleries from the west such as Gagosian Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Lisson Gallery, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin and White Cube.

The Big Apple...

2011-04-08T00:37:00.000-04:00

MICHAEL PIETSCH: The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

2011-04-04T16:01:00.000-04:00

Excerpt: 'The Pale King'

by David Foster Wallace

Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the a.m. heat: shattercane, lamb's-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother's soft hand on your cheek. An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak's thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A sunflower, four more, one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers.

Some crows come overhead then, three or four, not a murder, on the wing, silent with intent, corn-bound for the pasture's wire beyond which one horse smells at the other's behind, the lead horse's tail obligingly lifted. Your shoes' brand incised in the dew. An alfalfa breeze. Socks' burrs. Dry scratching inside a culvert. Rusted wire and tilted posts more a symbol of restraint than a fence per se. NO HUNTING. The shush of the interstate off past the windbreak. The pasture's crows standing at angles, turning up patties to get at the worms underneath, the shapes of the worms incised in the overturned dung and baked by the sun all day until hardened, there to stay, tiny vacant lines in rows and inset curls that do not close because head never quite touches tail. Read these.

From The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. Excerpted by permission of Little, Brown and Company.

George Tooker Dead at 90

2011-04-02T09:29:00.000-04:00

Artist George Tooker, who was awarded the National Medal of the Arts in 2007, died of kidney failure at his home in Hartland, Vt. on Sunday. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in August 1920, Tooker graduated from Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and Harvard University. In 1943, he enrolled at the Arts Students League in New York, where he studied with Reginald Marsh, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Harry Sternberg. A year later he met Paul Cadmus, and then Jared and Margaret French, artists with whom became lifelong friends. Cadmus, in particular, encouraged him to adopt egg tempera as his primary medium.

3D Computer Animation

2011-04-02T02:03:00.000-04:00

In a major departure from Hesiod, the 6th-century BC Greek elegiac poet Theognis of Megara tells us:

"Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind;
the others have left and gone to Olympus.
Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,
and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth.
Men’s judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted, nor does anyone
revere the immortal gods; the race of pious men has perished and
men no longer recognize the rules of conduct or acts of piety."

WHY SHAKESPEARE MATTERS

2011-04-01T00:27:00.000-04:00

"An inspirational documentary showing how live theater is decisive in changing young lives. This documentary shows the importance of live theater and the contemporary relevance of Shakespeare's plays through interviews with "at risk" kids and through testimonials and performances by many successful actors such as Tom Hanks, William Shatner, Martin Sheen, Michael York, Bill Pullman, Christina Applegate, and Michael Richards among others."

It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon
Who is already sick and pale with grief

That thou her maid art far more fair than she....
.....It is my lady! O, it is my love!
O, that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing.

I still remember those lines that I had memorized during my high school days, no, not to take part in the high school play, but to impress my friends. Shakespeare has always been the measure of an individual's depth of cultural understanding, and of taste and intellect: there were episodes of 'Batman' that showed Bruce Wayne (Batman) quoting Shakespeare, and noting Verse, and line. In the documentary Why Shakespeare Matters by Lawrence Bridges, we see various actors, some of whom are not really cut out to declaim Shakespearian lines (Tom Hanks comes to mind) expressing how influential the Bard has been in their lives. I must admit, that without the help of the Bard, my world would have been a lot lonelier....!

Dar Williams: Mark Rothko Song

2011-04-01T00:11:00.000-04:00

A beautiful tribute to the confounding, enthralling experience that viewing art can be. A particular trenchant line from this song has always stuck with me anytime I enter an art museum:

"...the painting is desperate but the crowds wash away, in a world of kind pedestrians who've seen enough today."

2011 PritzKer architecture Prize

2011-03-29T08:16:00.000-04:00

Eduardo Souto de Moura a 58 year old architect from Portugal, is the jury’s choice for the 2011 Pritzker Architecture Prize, it was announced today by Thomas J. Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation which sponsors the prize. The formal ceremony for what has come to be known throughout the world as architecture’s highest honor will be in one of Washington, D.C.’s finest classical buildings, the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium.

In announcing the jury’s choice, Pritzker elaborated, “This marks the second time in the history of the prize that a Portuguese architect has been chosen. The first was in 1992 when Alvaro Siza was so honored.” The purpose of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, which was founded in 1979 by the late Jay A. Pritzker and his wife, Cindy, is to honor annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.

Eduardo Souto de Moura was born in Porto, Portugal in 1952. His father was a doctor (ophthalmologist) and his mother a home maker. He has one brother and one sister. The sister is also a doctor and his brother is a lawyer with a political career – formerly he was Attorney General of Portugal. Following his early years at the Italian School, Souto de Moura enrolled in the School of Fine Arts in Porto, where he began as an art student, studying sculpture, but eventually achieving his degree in architecture. He credits a meeting with Donald Judd in Zurich for the switch from art to architecture.

While still a student, he worked for architect Noé Dinis and then Álvaro Siza, the latter for five years. While studying and working with his professor of urbanism, Architect Fernandes de Sá, he received his first commission, a market project in Braga which has since been demolished because of changing business patterns.

THE PALE KING by David Foster Wallace

2011-03-28T11:02:00.000-04:00

The Pale Kinggreat free widgetsWidgetboxMore info

As I read the first few pages of The Pale King I recognized familiar stylistic devices sprinkled on its (i.e. The pale King) pages that I have come to know and love, including the familiar foot-note device, which taxed my eyesight to the limit, because its tiny print was included with the regular text, reminiscent of pesky credit card company documents, legal agreements, copyright claims and disclaimers, often ignored, but meant to be read, and necessary.

When I came across the lines: “The Sun overhead like a peephole into hell’s own self consuming heart,” and “smelled up close the carpet’s grit base,” which I recognized from reading Infinite Jest, it felt like I was meeting an old friend. As I continued reading his (i.e. DFW’s) narrative, I experienced once again the precision of his language, and the familiarly long, yet perfectly syntactic, sentences I had grown accustomed to reading in DFW’s previous work.

The more chapters I read, the more it became obvious that the “unfinished” Pale King had been painstakingly assembled by DFW’s editor Michael Pietsch, as a labor of love and as a tribute to its author, from rough and polished chapters DFW would had revised before publication had he not sadly succumbed to his ailment before completion of the novel.

"The Pale King...grapples directly with ultimate questions--questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society--through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time."

--Hachette Book Group

The Pale King is sad, often difficult, but brilliant, despite its ‘unfinished’ subtitle.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: THE PALE KING

2011-03-25T02:18:00.000-04:00

Advanced look at David Foster Wallace's "Last and most ambitious undertaking"

Editor: Michael Pietsch
Available April 15, 2011 from Little Brown

2011-03-21T21:13:00.000-04:00

Detroit Institute of Art

Art Babble

Fakes, Forgeries and Mysteries

Narrator: Salvador Salort-Pons, Associate Curator of European Paintings

Q. When is a painting signed by Claude Monet, not a Monet?

A. When his signature is forged in order to make Money.

Art forgery is no joke. Art forgery dates back more that 2000 years. From the Romans, who copied Greek sculptures, and whose purchasers believed to be originals, to China, where 'faking" dates from at least the sung dynasty, (960-1280) to the 14th century, when Italian stone carvers lead the way in commercial forgery, faking works of art by imitating Greek and Roman master craftsmen; to 'The Garden Shed Gang,' who made over a million pounds with their massive art faking.

The art of uncovering forgeries has recently been aided by the development of new technologies such as infrared photography, carbon dating, and various other methods of detecting. Together with scholarship, it is giving curators and collectors, a better means to protect their collections, and investments from the possible inclusion of "Fakes." At the same time, scholarship and technology is helping institutions correct attributions of works formerly thought to be of a Master, to be correctly attributed to "schools of" or "in the manner of," thus opening the field of Art History and scholarship to an exciting future.

Granta 113: The Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists

2011-03-18T00:12:00.000-04:00

From Borges to Bolaño, the Spanish language has given us some of the most beloved writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. But as the reach of Spanish-language culture extends far beyond Spain and Latin America, and as the US tilts towards a majority Hispanic population, it is time to ask who is next in this exciting tradition. Chosen by a distinguished panel of six judges, Granta and Granta en español present twenty-two literary stars of the future. ■

Click on the authors’ names for responses to their stories by previous Best Young Novelists, including Adam Thirlwell,A.L. Kennedy andJonathan Safran Foer. Plus interview answers on their influences and the writer’s role in public life:

Andrés Barba – Spain, 1975 Oliverio Coelho – Argentina, 1977 Andrés Ressia Colino – Uruguay, 1977Federico Falco – Argentina, 1977Pablo Gutiérrez – Spain, 1978Rodrigo Hasbún – Bolivia, 1981 Sònia Hernández – Spain, 1976 Carlos Labbé – Chile, 1977 Javier Montes –Spain, 1976 Elvira Navarro – Spain, 1978 Matías Néspolo – Argentina, 1975Andrés Neuman – Argentina, 1977Alberto Olmos – Spain, 1975 Pola Oloixarac – Argentina, 1977 Antonio Ortuño – Mexico, 1976 Patricio Pron –Argentina, 1975 Lucía Puenzo –Argentina, 1976 Santiago Roncagliolo– Peru, 1975 Andrés Felipe Solano –Colombia, 1977 Samanta Schweblin –Argentina, 1978 Carlos Yushimito –Peru, 1977 Alejandro Zambra – Chile, 1975

Gauguin: Maker of Myth

2011-03-15T07:10:00.000-04:00

A portion of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., has the look of a tropical paradise these days. A major exhibition of works by 19th century post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin includes oil paintings and other objects he created on the South Seas island of Tahiti. But the real Tahiti bore little resemblance to the one Gauguin depicted on his canvases.

Meditation And Modern Art

2011-03-15T06:55:00.000-04:00

The Rothko Chapel is a sacred space open to all every day to provide a place of worship, meditation and prayer for persons of all faiths; to provide a forum for people to gather and explore spiritual bonds common to all; to discuss human problems of worldwide interest; and to share a spiritual experience, each loyal to his or her belief, each respectful of the beliefs of others.

The Chapel has two vocations: contemplation and action. It is a place alive with religious ceremonies of all faiths, and where the experience and understanding of all traditions are encouraged and made available. Action takes the form of supporting human rights, and thus the Chapel has become a rallying place for all people concerned with peace, freedom, and social justice throughout the world.

"WE WERE CREATORS" Isak Dinesen

2011-03-13T23:19:00.000-04:00

The Google folks recently introduced their newest feature to the arsenal of 'Googlewonders,' namely their Googleartproject. The project gives the "Googlenauts" access to works of art hanging in some of the most famous art galleries in the world. Not just a quick tour, mind you, the program affords the 'user' a nearly microscopic look at the works in these collections ( without a guard tapping on your shoulder telling you not to get any closer.) In fact, the zooming capability of the program lets you see brushstrokes up close (like the extreme detail, of a Cezanne painting above, from the MoMa in New York.) You no longer need to travel to New York to view the very details of these masterworks.

"You no longer need to travel"..... This reminded me of a passage from an interview in The Paris Review with the writer Isak Dinesen, part of the "Writers at Work" series in which Ms. Dinesen recalls... well, I think I should give the full excerpt here to illustrate my point:

INTERVIEWER: Do you know Rome Well? How long since you've been there?

ISAK DINESEN: A few years ago when I had an audience with the Pope. I first came in 1912 as a young girl, staying with my cousin and best friend, who was married to our Danish ambassador to Rome. We rode in the Borghese Gardens then, every day. There were carriages with the great beauties of the day in them, and one stopped and chatted. It was delightful. Now look at this motors and motor-bicycles and noise and rushing about. It's what the young want, though: Speed is the greatest thing for them. But when I think of riding my horse--I always had a horse when I was a girl--I feel like something very precious is lost on them today. Children of my day lived differently. We had little in the way of toys, even in great houses. Modern mechanical playthings, which furnish their own motion, had hardly come into existence. We had simpler toys and had to animate them. My love of marionettes springs from this, I think. One might, of course, buy a hobbyhorse, but we loved better a knotted stick personally chosen in the woods, which our imagination could turn into Bucephalus or Pegasus. Unlike children of today, who are content from birth to be observers....we were creators.

Overlooked...

2011-03-13T20:34:00.000-04:00

Five direly underappreciated U.S. novels >1960.
BY DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
(Opinions expressed are of course just DFWs personal own and reflect nothing/nobody and etc.)
"Omensetter s Luck" by William H. Gass (1966)
Gass' first novel, and his least avant-gardeish, and his best. Basically a religious book. Very sad. Contains the immortal line "The body of Our Saviour shat but Our Saviour shat not." Bleak but gorgeous, like light through ice.
"Steps" by Jerzy Kosinski (1968)
This won some big prize or other when it first came out, but today nobody seems to remember it. "Steps" gets called a novel but it is really a collection of unbelievably creepy little allegorical tableaux done in a terse elegant voice that's like nothing else anywhere ever. Only Kafka's fragments get anywhere close to where Kosinski goes in this book, which is better than everything else he ever did combined.
"Angels" by Denis Johnson (1983)
This was Johnson's first fiction after the horripilative lyric poetry of "Incognito Lounge." Even cult fans of "Jesus' Son" often haven't heard of "Angels." It's sort of "Jesus' Son's" counterpoint, a novel-length odyssey of mopes and scrotes and their brutal redemptions. A totally American book, it's also got great prose, truly great, some of the '80s' best; e.g. lines like "All around them men drank alone, staring out of their faces."
"Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West" by Cormac McCarthy (1985)
Don t even ask.
"Wittgenstein's Mistress" by David Markson (1988)
"W's M" is a dramatic rendering of what it would be like to live in the sort of universe described by logical atomism. A monologue, formally very odd, mostly one-sentence 6s. Tied with "Omensetter's Luck" for the all-time best U.S. book about human loneliness. These wouldn t constitute ringing endorsements if they didn t happen all to be simultaneously true -- i.e., that a novel this abstract and erudite and avant-garde that could also be so moving makes "Wittgenstein's Mistress" pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country.

"PLAY IT AGAIN SAM.."

2011-03-12T11:55:00.000-05:00

In David Foster Wallace's novel "Infinite Jest," (Little Brown, 1996) a video cartridge contains a movie of the same title, so entertaining, that the watcher cannot stop watching it. The watcher becomes so obsessed that he/she eventually dies of starvation or dehydration.

In Wallace's book, 'entertainment,' becomes a solipsistic act leading to addiction. Entertainment, in its various forms, is no longer a past-time, but the raison d'etre. His futuristic insight into the nature of entertainment and its 'hold' of the american mind is fatalistic, yet eerily familiar.

Similarly, in an article by Thomas De Zengotita (Harper's April 2002) titled, 'The Numbing of the American Mind, Culture as Anesthetic," Zengotita explores the idea that "reality has become indistinguishable from fabrication." He even offers an interesting set of categories of fabrication:

* Real real: You fall down the stairs. Stuff in your life that's so familiar you've forgotten the statement it makes.

* Observed real: You drive by a car wreck. Stuff in your life in which the image-statement is as salient as the function.

* Between real real and observed real: Stuff that oscillates between the first two categories. Like you're wearing something you usually take for granted but then you meet someone attractive.

* Edited real real: Shtick you have down so pat you don't know it's shtick anymore, but you definitely only use it in certain situations. Documentaries and videos in which people are unaware of the camera, though that's not easy to detect, actually. Candid photographs.

* Edited observed real: Other people's down-pat shtick. Shtick you are still working on. Documentaries in which people are accommodating the camera, which is actually a lot of the time, probably.

* Staged real: Formal events like weddings. Retail-clerk patter.

* Edited staged real: Pictures of the above. Homemade porn.

* Staged observed real unique: Al kisses Tipper. Survivor.

* Staged observed real repeated: Al kisses Tipper again and again. Anchor-desk and talk-show intros and segues. Weather Channel behavior.

(In the interests of time, we can skip the subtler middle range of distinctions and go to the other end of the spectrum:)

* Staged realistic: The English Patient and NYPD Blue.

* Staged hyperreal: Oliver Stone movies and Malcolm in the Middle.

* Overtly unreal realistic: S.U.V.'s climbing buildings. Digitized special effects in general, except when they are more or less undetectable.

* Covertly unreal realistic: Hair in shampoo ads. More or less undetectable digital effects, of which there are more every day.

* Between overtly and covertly unreal realistic: John Wayne in a beer ad (you have to know he's dead to know he isn't "really" in the ad).

* Real unreal: Robo-pets.

* Unreal real: Strawberries that won't freeze because they have fish genes in them.

See? No problem. The differences are perfectly clear.

"... the massive influx of impressions is so great; surprising, barbaric, and violent things press so overpoweringly--"balled up into hideous clumps"--win the youthful soul; that it can save itself only by taking recourse in premeditated stupidity."

--Friedrich Nietzsche

Habitations of the Word..

2011-03-10T23:41:00.000-05:00

"Cartooning fundamentals" is the title of a class I took many years ago. It taught me the basics of combining words and images for effect. What the class failed to teach me was a sense irony: how to turn words, and phrases, into psychological traps, mind bending double binds, clever and amusing anecdotes. That, I realized, is a state of being, of mind, a gift you are born with, a genetic trait passed on from generation to generation, albeit, often skipping a generation, like a genetic trait: blue eyes. Over the years, I have also come to realize that 'words' are elusive tools:

"The word is like the soul itself, that intermediary thing which moves between the realms of Being and Becoming" says William Gass, in his 'Habitations of the Word.'

We believe words, as symbols; as words, concretely and eloquently represent our thoughts. Yet, words, so pregnant with meaning, are mere vessels that carry, not precision, but obfuscation. Words' meanings can deceive, change like shape-shifters, in the eyes of the beholder, and appear like the Brocken spectre of their writer.

"The spoken word is alive in a context of life: the breath, the pause, the intonation, the look of the mouth, the eye, the posture of the body, gestures of arm and tilt of head--all contribute to its meaning. The written word emasculates memory.." --Gass

Amen!

The Desert of Forbidden Art

2011-03-07T19:31:00.000-05:00

“The Desert of Forbidden Art,” an American-made documentary, will try to draw international attention to Mr. Savitsky’s life’s work: a museum in the parched hinterland of Uzbekistan that is home to one of the world’s largest collections of Russian avant-garde art. Until now the museum has been known chiefly to journalists and art lovers who returned from the remote city of Nukus with a dazed look and a remarkable tale, as if they had stumbled into Ali Baba’s cave.

PICASSO works discovered in trunk

2010-11-29T19:36:00.000-05:00

Consider the following: An elderly couple shows up at the door of Picasso's son Claude, with a trove of 200 plus works the couple claim to have been created and gifted them "by the master" and they'd like to have them authenticated.

The couple: Pierre Le Guennec, a 71-year-old former electrician, who once worked for Picasso, and his wife Danielle, for years squirreled away the staggering trove - which is believed to be authentic - inside a trunk in the garage of their home on the French Riviera.

The Loot: Never-before-seen works by Pablo Picasso estimated to be worth at least $79.35 million, dating from the artist's most creative period from 1900 to 1932, includes lithographs, portraits, watercolors, and sketches - plus nine Cubist collages said to be worth $52.3 million alone, according to French daily Liberation, which first reported Monday on the discovery.

The Law: Police on Oct. 5 raided the couple's home, questioned them and hauled off the works - which are now held by France's official agency in charge of battling the illegal traffic of cultural items.

The Estate: Neuer filed suit on behalf of Picasso's heirs for alleged illegal receipt of the works. Police investigators are looking into how Le Guennec and his wife, Danielle, came by the pictures.

What's Next?: "My husband was well-regarded by the master," Danielle Le Guennec said, but noted that the couple was having "a little difficulty" with his son: "He's put a knife in our back, taken us to court and accused us of theft - he'll have to prove it," she said. "We're still happy to have our works ... we'll see what happens next."

THE PALE KING by David Foster Wallace

2010-09-26T13:02:00.000-04:00

DFW's "unfinished symphony" is due out on April 15, 2011. The cover art was released by Little, Brown & Co., designed by Karen Green, his wife.

"Michael Pietsch, the publisher of Little, Brown and the editor of the novel, said in a statement that in the the novel, Mr. Wallace “takes agonizing daily events like standing in lines, traffic jams, and horrific bus rides — things we all hate — and turns them into moments of laughter and understanding.” The statement went on to say, “Although David did not finish the novel, it is a surprisingly whole and satisfying reading experience that showcases his extraordinary imaginative talents and his mixing of comedy and deep sadness in scenes from daily life.”

There have been questions in the 'blogosphere' as to whether or not the story, the book has an ending, and whether it ends without resolution; and whether or not someone other than the original author finished the book. Like some posthumous books from authors whose lives ended before their books were finished, it is very likely that The Pale King will attract "cult followers" of the author, and possibly those curious to find out what the hyperbole is all about ( not unlike the time in 1996 when Wallace's book, and "magnum opus," Infinite Jest, was published, and the hype for the book attracted media attention and book buyers who never finished reading the 1079 page tome. To this day you can get "never read, like new," copies of IJ on ebay ) Nevertheless, David Foster Wallace's ouvre will be enhanced by the publication of the Pale King, despite its "unfinished" status; because, as some scholars may argue, that brilliance is in the writing itself, ergo, the delight will be in reading David Foster Wallace's sentences, despite any unresolved, or lack of, tidy ending.

David Foster Wallace

2010-09-11T23:18:00.001-04:00

David Foster Wallace

February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008

It's difficult, and it's easy. It is difficult because 9/12/2010 is the anniversary of David Foster Wallace's death. It's also difficult because it is hard to come up with the right words to honor a master of the word. On the other hand, it is easy to want to write about him, despite the rudeness of my skills with words; because he remains so awe inspiring in so many levels. It's also easy to want to share with others the genius of DFW because it is through his books, especially INFINITE JEST, that I got to know him. It is difficult to think that such genius was cut short and that I'll have to pace my reading of his ouvre so I will never run out of his works to read. Nevertheless, what I think is the most difficult, is to think that this world was never meant for one as beautiful as David Foster Wallace. Here are a few links to his work:

Reportage:"Host" The Atlantic Monthly, April, 2005 "Consider The Lobster" Gourmet, August, 2004 " Video of Wallace reading from the article "Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All" (1994, originally printed as "Ticket To The Fair") and "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," (1996, originally printed as "Shipping Out") both from Harper's. "David Lynch Keeps His Head" Premiere, September, 1996

Essays: "Laughing With Kafka" Harper's, July, 1998 "Federer as Religious Experience" New York Times Play Magazine, August 20, 2006 Transcript of commencement address for Kenyon College, Spring, 2005 "'Borges': Writer On The Couch" New York Times Book Review, November 7, 2004 "Tense Present: Democracy, Usage And The War Over Usage" Harper's, April, 2001 "John Updike, Champion Literary Phallocrat, Drops One; Is This Finally The End For Magnificent Narcissists?" New York Observer, October 13, 1997"Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes: A Midwestern Boyhood" Harper's, December, 1991

Fiction: "The Compliance Branch" Harper's, February, 2008 (excerpt "from a work in progress")"Good People" The New Yorker, February 5, 2007; "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men" Harper's, October, 1998 "The Depressed Person" Harper's, January, 1998 "Nothing Happened" Open City, No. 5, 1997"The Awakening Of My Interest In Annular Systems" Harper's, September, 1993 "Rabbit Resurrected" Harper's, August, 1992 "Everything Is Green" Harper's, September, 1989

See also this video of Wallace's Charlie Rose interview from 1997.

LOT 181 ...Lot Sold for 1,538,500 USD at Sotheby's

2010-01-29T10:26:00.000-05:00

LOT 181

PROPERTY OF THE HAHN FAMILY
FOLLOWER OF LEONARDO DA VINCI, PROBABLY BEFORE 1750
PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN, CALLED "LA BELLE FERRONNIÈRE"

300,000—500,000 USD
Lot Sold. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 1,538,500 USD

Sometimes in the art market it is the "provenance" of a work of art that determines its rarity and the price an object would fetch at auction.

Provenance, the story behind the origin of a work of art and history of its ownership, is often what determines desirability and ultimately its price in the Art market.

Attributions such as " in the manner of, by followers of, school of" became ubiquitous when determining authenticity and originality of works of art was based on science and not connoisseurship alone. Methods of testing the materials in works of art (pigments, wood, canvas, ) which may include carbon dating, X-ray, lead-content, and forensic research, have become a common and reliable tool in determining a work's authenticity. Use of these tests by scholars, paired with knowledge and familiarity with an artist's techniques, has forced dealers and museum curators to take a closer look at their holdings for forgeries, reproductions, and miss-attributions. On Valentine's Day 1961, the Met issued the following statement:

"The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced yesterday that, as a result of recently completed studies, its three "Etruscan" terracotta statues must be considered of doubtful authenticity. For some years there have been conflicting claims about these statues on stylistic grounds. Recently the staff of the Museum began a series of modern scientific and technical analyses. These developed convincing proof that these famous statues were not made in ancient times." ---Archeology.org

"La Belle Ferronniere" earned a certain notoriety, and became part of the lore of American art collecting, when it was the subject of an important law suit that involved scholars, some considered experts at the time such as Bernard Berenson and art dealer Joseph Duveen, that resulted in an out-of-court settlement of $60,000,00. This historical fact alone may give this work of art a sheen of desirability that some collectors might find appealing enough to justify paying a considerable amount of money for a work that may, or may not be, a newer version of the original.

TO CLEAN OR NOT TO CLEAN..that's part of the question

2010-01-27T08:57:00.000-05:00

The recent news about a "gash" in an early Picasso painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, brings "Art Conservation" back to the limelight.

The art of Preservation or conservation, or restoration, is the science of caring, often repairing , and protecting fragile works of art, from the passage of time, natural disasters, vandalism, or the clumsiness of an art student.

This very important science has remained well protected by the shadows of the Masterpieces it has rescued, and by the stealth, transparency, and skill, obligatory in its practice, and strictly followed by its most skilled followers.

It is often controversy, not brilliancy, that shifts the limelight away from the masterpiece
to the skilled, often camera-shy, practitioners of this most important art, and science.

Perhaps the most recent controversial event that brought to light the practices, techniques, and the paparazzi, was the restoration of the Frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
(photo shows before, during, and after. )

The Sistine Chapel frescoes, commissioned by Pope Julius the Second in 1506 to a Michelangelo Buonarroti, were completed in four years, 1508 through 1512, and came to be considered the greatest work of art in the Western world. In 1980, the Vatican announced it's plans to launch a massive cleaning and restoration project on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling frescoes. The project cost the Vatican millions of dollars and took twelve years to complete. The conservation project remains a hot debate topic in the art world to this day.

Conservation, nevertheless, remains one of the most important aspects of art collecting, regardless of the art world's opinions or controversies. Without the art of conservation and its practitioners, many masterpieces, from the paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux in southwestern France, to the Annunciation by Jan Van Eyck (originally painted on board, and transferred to canvas by literally "peeling" it off the wood, by its Russian owners) to the Pieta, and the Sistine Chapel ceiling, would be lost forever as actual objects, and survive only in reproductions, posters, and digital images on the web.

Surviving the repair of a six-inch tear, even on a hundred-year-old canvas, is probably akin to surviving surgery on a hang nail, thanks to the advances in both, conservation and medicine on the latter example. This is not to say, however, that once the repairs are completed there will not be a "scar" though probably not more than a hairline. Nevertheless, the Picasso tear, one hopes, will give the art of conservation its proper place in art circles, and a lot more funding for its practice.

WOMAN FALLS AND TEARS A PICASSO WORTH $100 MILLION

2010-01-25T22:04:00.000-05:00

There are cases of vandalism perpetrated on works of art by Iconoclasts. In 1972, a man wielding a hammer and shouting "I am Jesus Christ" leaped a barrier in front of Michelangelo's Pieta and repeatedly smashed the masterpiece before the horrified eyes of Sunday tourists, as reported by UPI.

On Friday afternoon a woman taking an adult education class at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art accidentally fell into “The Actor,” causing "an irregular, six-inch tear running vertically along the lower right-hand corner" the New York Times reported.

According to a statement released on Sunday by officials at the museum, the damage did not occur “in the focal point of the composition,” they expected that the repair would be “unobtrusive.”

"The Actor" was painted by Pablo Ruiz Picasso in 1904-05 when the artists was 23-years old, and living the life of a starving artist, according to biographers of Picasso. "Dealers say a painting of this scale and period could be worth well over $100 million."

The identity of the woman has not been released. At least the MET doesn't follow the Pottery Barn rule: "you brake it, you buy it!"

The BARNES FOUNDATION is moving to Philly

2010-01-13T11:16:00.001-05:00

In 2004, a judge ruled that the Barnes Foundation, founded by Albert C. Barnes, could relocate from its present home in Merion, to a new location on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, causing furor in the art world with some arguing that the site's unique environment for art-viewing could never be matched elsewhere. Barnes stipulated in the foundation's charter and bylaws that the works must always be displayed just as he arranged them, and could not be sold or moved to another location.

Immediately following the death of Dr. Barnes in 1951, Nelle E. Mullen, secretary and treasurer, according to Howard Greenfeld in his 1987 unauthorized biography of Dr. Barnes, announced that "nothing would change" that the collection would remain intact at its present location, and the educational program would be the same as in the past.

The Foundation, however, arguing that it was becoming financially difficult to maintain the collection in its present location, petitioned a Montgomery County, Pa., court in 2002 for permission to amend the bylaws so that the collection could be moved to a new home on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, with a new building, arguing that the collection would attract more visitors and financing. On October 5, 2009, the Philadelphia Art Commission revealed the architectural plans of Williams and Tsien. (Read more here )

KENNETH NOLAND DIES AT 85

2010-01-06T12:58:00.000-05:00

Kenneth Noland

Born 1924, Asheville, North Carolina

Studied at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, 1946-48, and with Ossip Zadkins in Paris, 1948-49. Taught at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Washington, D.C., 1949-51, at the Catholic University, Washington, D.C., 1951-60, and at the Washington Workshop Center of the Arts, 1952-56. Served as Milton Avery Professor of the Arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, 1985.

LIVING WITH ART

2010-01-04T09:21:00.000-05:00

"You must have some very interesting walls in your home" said a woman at an antique store, many years ago, when I purchased an African mask with carved incisions reminiscent of a face from a Picasso painting from his "Demoiselles d'Avignon" period. What hangs on my walls may or may not be "Interesting" to some, but it is what I choose to live with.

The "Living with" aspect of a work of art is perhaps one of the most important tests, next to the aesthetic, and financial, I use when evaluating a work of art to purchase for myself.

For instance, I could not live with some of the later period works by Picasso. One example of paintings I could not live with, is his paintings from the famous series "Women from Algiers" acquired by Victor Ganz for his collection fresh off the artist's easel and hung in a windowless room on walls painted a bright carmine red. Yowza!

I couldn't live with, and had to part with, a large etching by Kaethe Kollwitz. Although I admire the works by this gifted German painter, print maker and sculptor, whose etchings, and woodcuts eloquently portrayed the suffering of victims of poverty, hunger and war-- but I just could not bare looking at a dying child in the arms of a helpless mother day-after-day.

This is not to say, however, that I do not admire the strength of these creations, or the importance of these artists in an "art historical" sense. Some of the landmark accomplishments these works represent are invaluable to the development of art and humanity. Nevertheless, the litmus test of "living with it," to me, is an imperative when evaluating works of art for my collection.

Visionary private collectors, whose collections were guided by audacity, and not just by taste and vision, have historically become the corner stones of many museum collections

( The Ganz collection, with landmark works by Picasso, Jasper Jons, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, was sold at auction in 1997 and not donated to any single museum, en bloc. It was considered the largest private owner sale in history) clearly, though, I am not thinking as an art historian or museum curator when enhancing my collection.

Living with the works of artists I admire means being true to myself. There is no "hidden" reason other than the love of art for my collecting impetus. I don't collect to impress my family or friends, or to speculate in the art market. I collect because (in a rather romantic, and what may be considered "old fashioned" sense) my spirit is uplifted by the works of artists whose talent I admire. This is not to say that I only admire and collect works of artists whose names are ubiquitous in the art collecting world. I own pieces by unknowns, little known, and emerging artists whose art works enhance my daily life, and I enjoy living with.

The point of this confession-rant is that Works of Art should be more than just mere commodities or luxury goods. Works of Art should uplift our spirit, challenge our perceptions, give us a sense of completeness, make us see new worlds, and most of all, remind us of what makes us human. And yet, it should also be something we want to live with.

JEWISH MUSEUM LANDS IMPORTANT CHAGALL GOUACHE

2010-01-02T01:36:00.000-05:00

The gouache on heavy paper, which Chagall signed and titled himself lightly with a pencil in Russian — “Apocalypse in Lilac, Capriccio” — employs one of his familiar motifs, an image of a crucified Jesus, which he used as a metaphor for persecuted Jewry. But this crucifixion, painted in New York, where Chagall settled for several years, is one of the most brutal and disturbing ever created by an artist primarily known for his brightly colored folkloric visions.

“Apocalypse” shows a naked Christ screaming at a Nazi storm trooper below the cross, who has a backwards swastika on his arm, a Hitler-like mustache and a serpentine tail. Another small figure can be seen crucified and a second being hanged, and a man appears to be poised to stab a child. A damaged, upside-down clock falls from the sky. The darkness and directness of the work may have been a response not only to the war but also to the death of Chagall’s wife, Bella, a year earlier from a viral infection that might have been treated if not for wartime medicine shortages.

It will go on public display for the first time, at the Osborne Samuel gallery in Mayfair, before moving into the museum’s permanent collection at the end of the month. In going on view, it will become another of the notable publicly exhibited examples of Chagall’s wartime imagery, like the “Yellow Crucifixion” from 1943, at the Georges Pompidou Center, and the “White Crucifixion” from 1938 at the Art Institute of Chicago. --THE NEW YORK TIMES

NO SELLER GUARANTEES = NO SALES

2009-12-16T01:44:00.000-05:00

Annual sales of contemporary art slumped 75 percent at the two largest auction houses’ evening sales in 2009 after they abandoned price guarantees to sellers.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s International made a combined total of $482.3 million with fees from their five regular “Part I” sales of high-value art in New York and London this year, according to figures compiled by Bloomberg News. In 2008, the same group of flagship auctions made $1.97 billion. That compares with a record $2.4 billion in 2007, and $1.1 billion in 2006.

“As soon as guarantees were taken off the table, sellers became uncertain, clients don’t want to see big- ticket works go to public auction and fail. A lot of people turned to discreet private sales at the auction houses.”

---- Bloomberg

DON'T DRINK AND BID... UNLESS YOU'RE HUGH GRANT

2009-12-16T01:33:00.000-05:00

Grant told the Mail that he ordered an assistant to bid for the painting at an auction in New York. "And to my horror, she did, and even worse, got it," he said.

But the story has a happy ending.

Grant said he sold the painting in 2007 for £13 million.

HE MADE THE MUMMIES DANCE

2009-12-15T01:35:00.000-05:00

Thomas Hoving died on December 10 aged 78, He was director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1967 to 1977. His obituary writers used words like, controversial, handsome, tall, slender, aristocratic, charismatic, populist, showman, to describe him.

The NY times is where I learned of Mr. Hoving's passing. It is also where I learned of his existence. Never before had I heard the name, despite my deep interest on all things Art related. Mr. Hoving's name, albeit, familiar to anyone associated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in the museum industry, was not on any of my lists.

I visited the Met, not very long ago. I was overwhelmed by the hundreds and hundreds of people swarming inside its galleries, tanning themselves on the main steps to the museum, lining up at the bookstore/souvenir shop. I was also in awe when greeted there by marvelous artifacts, paintings, sculptures, and even a complete Egyptian temple. Little did I know that the man responsible for this was, in great part, Mr. Hoving.

Who was Mr. Tom Hoving? really. I set out to find out. I visited my local library and looked him up. I resisted the temptation of Wikipedia and Google, and went straight to the source: his books.

I checked out: King of the Confessors: ' In 1960, Hoving, then a young assistant curator at The Cloisters, the medieval branch of the Met, joined the quest for the mysterious object. The Work, an ivory cross, was hidden in a vault in Zurich... " The tale of how a humble curatorial assistant, acquired the 12th-century ivory masterpiece known as the Bury St. Edmunds Cross.

Tutankhamun: The Untold Story; False Impressions The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes,

Making the Mummies Dance : Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I then watched a long interview stored in the Duke University Archives, a portion of which is excerpted here.

In the end, I realized I had missed the opportunity to know a remarkable, passionate man. The words used by writers to describe him: controversial, aristocratic, charismatic, seem appropriate, yet rather anemic at describing the person I got to know through his works and accomplishments.

THE RED BOOK of Carl G. Jung

2009-12-13T01:31:00.000-05:00

Dreams, the Collective Unconscious, Archetypes, remain a mystery to me, despite having read many of Dr. Jung's books and treaties.

I encountered the works of Dr. Jung soon after graduating from High School. His theories about the collective unconscious and the interpretation of dreams inspired me to begin recording my daily dreams. I kept a journal next to my bed to scribble on its pages whatever bits and pieces remained fresh in my mind of the dreams that were quickly vanishing as I awoke.

Keeping a dream journal was not difficult. Deciphering the scribbles and the meaning of the recorded dreams certainly was. I found that out after having spent nearly a year recording incomprehensible trials an tribulations that happened in my mind during REM sleep. I abandoned the practice of recording my dreams when I outgrew my curiosity of trying to "see the future" in the nonsensical writings I jotted down in my dream journal.

The Red Book is Dr. Jung's dream journal. A work he kept private, and remained private and hidden in a bank vault for a very long time after the his death. the Book was not intended for publication, but is now available for the world to see.

I destroyed my dream journal soon after I stopped recording my dreams. I decided that its content was much too intimate to have around and embarrassing to those who made cameo appearances in my dreams.

The one positive outcome from keeping a dream journal was that I learned to use writing as a form of therapy to help me understand my emotions, and cope with fears and frustrations, without having to spend time and money seeing a therapist.

Art Basel Miami Beach, WHAT NOW?

2009-12-04T09:50:00.000-05:00

"It is difficult to understand just what's going on [in today's Art market] because a good deal of the art that's being produced is not even collectible---you almost can't live with it.....The newest things are just, you know, a pile of garbage in the corner. I guess. The whole spirit of today seems to be anti-art-collecting, where artists are purposely making things that are not convenient to have in the house."

That was Eugene V. Thaw, art dealer and collector, in an article in Architectural Digest of June, 2007, reflecting on the skyrocketing prices of Art, before the economic downturn's effect on the art market drove many dealers and collectors out of business.

Mr. Thaw also opines in the article that prices have less to do with art than with the amount of money that was floating around before the collapse: "when you've got the big house in Palm Beach, and three or four other houses and the yacht and the plane--and you still have untold millions in disposable income left over....you buy art."

Fast forward to December, 2009, art dealers are dipping their toes, cautiously, into the waters of this corrected art market, albeit, without the outlandish outputs of opulence seen in the past. Dealers are counting on collectors , fewer than before the bubble burst, with investment savvy, looking for bargains. If you can consider a Warhol, Murakami and Hirst priced at $5 or $6 million, a bargain.

This year's ABMB accommodates 267 galleries from 33 countries and thousands of artworks. "Dealers are making things easy, too, with mostly low-risk, accessible material." Comments Linday Yablonsky of the New York Times, .."though Hauser & Wirth had an actual car, done in stainless steel by Subodh Gupta. (pictured above)

So, what would Mr. Eugene V. Thaw, art dealer and collector, say about the current art scene? I imagine that two years is not enough time to change his eloquence: " I cant' believe the seriousness with which an artist like Jeff Koons is taken--the kind of prices they fetch."

GET TO KNOW MONET, 'NOSE TO CANVAS'

2009-11-28T08:46:00.000-05:00

Quite recently I had the opportunity to chat with a gentleman about art. He was telling me about his experience with the paintings by Monet he had just seen at a recent exhibition, his entire face lit up when he spoke. He could not contain his excitement.

His excitement reminded me how seldom people experience art first-hand. Most people have seen Monet's Hay Stacks or Water Lillis. If you ask someone about Monet, they will quickly tell you about his work and how much they love it. However, if you ask them if they have SEEN THE ACTUAL paintings, they will not reply as quickly with a positive answer.

So. The point of the story is that in the age of the Internet, most people experience art second-hand, so to say. Google: Monet/images, and you'll find thousands and thousands of reproductions of his works. To some this will count as having seen a Monet. Nevertheless, and this is the crux of my point here: They have not experienced a Monet.

Now, when I say "experienced" a Monet, I mean more than just having looked at a Monet in reproduction, I mean, having been 'nose to canvas' with a Monet. Those who have been dangerously close to a painting by Monet, or any other Impressionist paintings, for that matter, will understand that there is an immense difference between a reproduction and the original.

The original, especially under the right light conditions, will reveal the artist's brush strokes, it will reveal his technique in handling paint, in mixing colors, and if the painting has been well preserved, the paint itself will show a vibrancy very seldom experienced in posters, photos, calendars, mugs, T-shirts, bed spreads, underwear or, the thumbnail Jpeg on this blog.

Therefore, I say, turn off this pesky computer of yours and go to your local museum or gallery, and Experience some real art, for a change.

When does $200 sell for $43.8 million?

2009-11-26T11:22:00.000-05:00

Think the art market is dead? Think again! Andy Warhol's silk-screen painting 200 One Dollar Bills sold for $43.8 million at Sotheby's today, more than four times its estimated selling price. The seven-and-a-half-foot-wide canvas is one of Warhol's earliest works and looks like just what you'd think — 200 one-dollar bills.

Munch artwork stolen in Norway

2009-11-25T00:42:00.001-05:00

Police investigate the scene after a artwork was stolen from an Oslo art dealer late Thursday, in Oslo, Norway, Friday, Nov. 13, 2009. Police say thieves stole a valuable artwork by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch from an Oslo art dealer. Police spokeswoman Britt Boerve said Friday the thieves stole "Historien" or "History", a hand-colored lithograph, from Nyborgs Kunst, a private art dealership in downtown Oslo, after smashing one of the dealership's windows with a stone. (AP Photo/Lise Aaserud, Scanpix)

The Art of American Censorship...redux

2009-11-24T11:52:00.000-05:00

This book turned out to be a catalog from an exhibition held from January 10, through March 10, 2006, organized by the Welch School Gallery, sponsored by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

"The direct suppression of artwork is not the only way freedom of expression can be restricted. Government funding for the arts, copyright regulation and the exclusion of certain works from exhibition spaces also curtail the ability of artists to communicate their vision and the right of the public to access a wide variety of ideas."

Congress Approves Budget Increase for Arts

2009-11-20T08:36:00.000-05:00

Congress Approves Budget Increase for Arts and Humanities Endowments

By ROBIN POGREBIN / THE NEW YORK TIMES

Update | 3:27 p.m. The House and Senate on Thursday passed a budget increase for the National Endowment for the Arts and for the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Interior Appropriations Bill for fiscal year 2010 sets budgets for each agency at $167.5 million, up $12.5 million from last year. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law shortly. The funding comes as Rocco Landesman, the new chairman of the N.E.A., prepares to start a nationwide “Art Works” tour next week. “It’s never enough,” Mr. Landesman said. “But we’re looking for progress at a time when every dollar is precious. For us to get a notable increase is extremely heartening.”

The N.E.A. is currently funded at $155 million, and the White House had requested an increase to $161 million. The agency received an additional $50 million through the stimulus bill. This summer, the House approved $170 million for the arts endowment, while the Senate proposed $161.3 million. The final budget was decided in conference this week and passed by a vote of 247-178 in the House and 72-28 in the Senate.

“This important budget increase recognizes the essential role the arts play in our lives, schools, and communities,” said Robert L. Lynch, president and chief of Americans for the Arts, an advocacy group, in a statement.

WYETH NUNCOVERED

2009-11-12T08:17:00.000-05:00

Original painting (left)

New X-ray Microscope Uncovers Mysteries in Famous Wyeth Painting

This undated photo released by the Winterthur Museum shown is a colorized version of a black and white 1919 magazine illustration by N.C. Wyeth that was done for a periodical called "Everybody's Magazine." The illustration was discovered underneath another painting, and a

process of using X-ray beams was used to determine its original color by identifying the underling paint's chemical composition. (AP Photo/Brandywine River Museum, Winterthur Museum, Christina Bisulca)

X-radiography of an N. C. Wyeth family portrait (c. 1922-1924) has revealed the presence of a second painting buried underneath the surface. This painting has been identified as a 1919 work by Wyeth, previously thought to have been lost. No color representations of the work survive, and pigment characterization of the buried work was desired to determine if it was in painted in full color, and if so to generate a color reproduction. While limited samples could be removed for cross-section examination, confocal x-ray fluorescence microscopy (CXRF) was chosen as the method for non-destructively probing the composition of the buried paint layers. Sections of the painting were scanned using conventional XRF mapping in conjunction with CXRF depth scans to obtain compositional maps of the buried painting. These maps are being used to reproduce the buried image.

Liberty ...and Justice for all

2009-11-07T14:45:00.001-05:00

Another chapter in the history of Lehman Brothers is now closed. The artwork held by the once mighty financial institution fetched $1.35 million, almost double the $760,800 presale estimate by Freeman's Auctioneers. Nonetheless, it puts hardly a dent in the $250 billion that Lehman owes its creditors.

The auction lasted six hours and featured both fast-paced bidding and generous prices. Unsurprisingly, Roy Lichtenstein's Statue of Liberty print, titled "I Love Liberty," was the top lot at $49,000 (the presale estimate was only $25,000). Robert Indiana's "Polygons" prints brought in $23,750, almost four times the expectation. Every lot moved, the first time we've seen a 100 percent auction (high profile, at least) in a while.

BARGAIN PRICES?

2009-11-02T22:12:00.001-05:00

Christies was the first to test the troubled waters of the current moribund art market. At an auction in New York on Tuesday, "Danseuses," a painting by Edgar Degas, brought $9.5 million ($10.7 million including fees to Christie’s), well above its $9 million high estimate.

It would appear that the market will continue to favor rare items such as the beautiful "Danseuses." According to the NY times, Tuesday's Christie's sale was, in fact, "tepid" but there was no lack of interest, and bidding, when important items, with important provenance go on the block.

Nevertheless, it appears that collectors, the majority of which, according to the Times, are not Americans, are taking care to bid only for items that are proven to be strong assets. Which means that auction houses will keep items from emerging artists, or artists whose works are already fetching stratospheric prices, on the sidelines.

November 11 will bring another test of the market when Sotheby's dips its toes in the same troubled market waters.

Million dollar reward

2009-09-14T11:13:00.000-04:00

A collection of paintings by Andy Warhol have been stolen from the home of a famous collector reports the LA Times:

"A multimillion-dollar collection of original work by famed Pop Art icon Andy Warhol was stolen last week from a Los Angeles home, police said Friday.

On Sept. 3, a housekeeper for noted art collector Richard L. Weisman walked into the dining room of Weisman's residence and saw that 11 large portraits that had been on the walls the day before were gone, according to Det. Donald Hrycyk, head of the LAPD's art theft detail."

Michelangelo?

2009-08-07T10:21:00.000-04:00

Michelangelo is well known today mostly as a sculptor, but he received his early training as a painter, in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494), a leading master in Florence.”

According to a press release from the Metropolitann Museum of Art in NY,. “It was only in about 1490, following this apprenticeship, that he learned to carve marble.”

Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime; one of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries. In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine one"). One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his "terribilità," a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance, Mannerism. -Wikipedia

According to Michelangelo's 16th century biographers, his first work was a painted copy after a well-known engraving showing Saint Anthony tormented by demons. It is said that to give his monsters greater detail, Michelangelo went to the fish market to study the colors and scales of the fish.

Recently acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum, in Texas, the "The Torment of Saint Anthony” has undergone conservation and technical examination at the Met.

“Michelangelo’s First Painting.” If the picture is indeed the real thing, it’s quite a catch, being one of only four known easel paintings by Michelangelo, and the only one in an American collection.

The display, organized by Keith Christiansen, curator of European paintings at the Met, makes an active case for authenticity. It sets the painting and the Schongauer print side by side and flanks them with text panels spelling out some of the thinking that went into the attribution: a combination of historical research and stylistic analysis propelled by what Mr. Christiansen calls a “leap of the imagination.” ---NY Times

THE ART OF IMITIATION

2009-07-27T11:59:00.001-04:00

George Bernard Shaw is said to have quipped:
"I would give up all the paintings ever done of Jesus for a single photograph"

When Photography made its debut there was talk of it killing off all the art being created at the time. It turns out that photography never really replaced painting and artists continued to create.

Eventually, photography took its place on the art scene, with photographers like Paul Strand, who basically established photography as "Fine Art." Stieglitz and others had made photography an important medium but it took some time before photography became considered "Fine Art." In fact, Early photographers adopted styles in their photographs that closely imitated the styles of the major painters of the day and some artists used photographs as "sketches" for their final paintings.

"Sharon Core believes that imitation really is the highest form of flattery.

An accomplished photographer whose work is part of the permanent collection at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Core enjoys looking back through the pages of art history, re-staging still-life paintings in meticulous detail. Her most recent photographic series has been inspired by the lush canvases of early American still-life painter Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825)."

" Stones of Summer"

2009-07-10T12:13:00.000-04:00

It must be summer--a few summers ago I discovered at my local library the documentary "Stone Reader" by Mark Moskowitz. The film is a first person documentary about Moskowitz's search for the elusive author of "Stones of Summer" a book written by Dow Mossman. The story is simple: Mark reads a book and tries to find its author. I've seen the documentary enough times to know the outcome. However, I could say the same thing about Shakespeare's plays....I know how they end, in fact, I've memorized lines from his best hits, but I continue to enjoy them over, and over, Why? because of what lies between the beginning and the ending. It's the same with Mark's documentary.

When I first saw this documentary, a few summers ago, I could not contain my awe and excitement. I purchased several copies of the DVD and copies of the book "Stones of Summer" and sent them to friends and family members because I thought they would be mesmerized by the story as I was--well I can safely say that they've probably seen the documentary, but I'm sure they never read the Stones of Summer....(secret: I started reading it a long time ago, and have yet to make a dent in it)

So, since then, I've made it something of a ritual, to watch the documentary at the beginning of summer, and try to get back into the book, which I must admit, I have misplaced. It's fun however to watch the documentary and make lists of titles of books mentioned in the film so that I can then look for them at my local used book store.

There's something about book people and books that lift my spirit!

"HOT POT" The Euphronios vase

2009-07-10T08:42:00.000-04:00

The Euphronios vase, once the centerpiece of the Metropolitan Museum’s ancient-vase collection, is currently on display at the Villa Giulia in Rome.

“The Lost Chalice: The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece,” just published by William Morrow, makes a first-class page turner out of the stolen krater’s travels from ancient Greece to Etruscan Italy to New York and then back here — and of the travails of another work also by the sublime Euphronios, a kylix, or chalice, which was looted from the same spot here in Cerveteri, a town northwest of Rome." --NY Times

The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought this precious vase paying a million dollars, and little attention to its dubious provenance. The “hot pot,” as Thomas Hoving, the former Met director who bought it in 1972, mischievously took to calling it, is one of the many artifacts from antiquity that have attracted world-wide attention, having become the object of the new impetus to recover "stolen" historic artifacts by
countries like Greece and Italy, among others. Another important collection of objects recently in the news is the gathering of marble sculptures known as the "Elgin" marbles, also known as the Parthenon Marbles, obtained by the Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799–1803, who had obtained a controversial permission from the Ottoman authorities to remove pieces from the Acropolis. From 1801 to 1812 Elgin's agents removed about half of the surviving sculptures of the Parthenon, as well as architectural members and sculpture from the Propylaea and Erechtheum.^[3] The Marbles were transported by sea to Britain.

"In Britain, the acquisition of the collection was supported by artists and others,^[4] while some critics compared Elgin's actions to vandalismor looting.Following a public debate in Parliament and subsequent exoneration of Elgin's actions, the marbles were purchased by the British Government in 1816 and placed on display in the British Museum, where they stand now on view in the purpose-built Duveen Gallery. The legality of the removal has been questioned and the debate continues as to whether the Marbles should remain in the British Museum or be returned to Athens." ---Wikipedia

Another disputed collection involves Yale historian Hiram Bingham who rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911, and backed by the National Geographic Society, he returned with large expeditions in 1912 and 1915. Each time, he carted out crates filled with archaeological finds, with permission from Peruvian President Augusto Leguía.

Today, Peru is threatening to sue the Ivy League school, claiming the permission was either given illegally or misunderstood. The treasures of Machu Picchu, says David Ugarte, regional director of Peru's National Culture Institute, were given to the American explorer "on loan."
Peru's battle with Yale is not unique. Since 1820, when Greece demanded the return of the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum, countries of origin have steadily gotten more assertive about retrieving their heritage.

Reclaiming a nation's heritage seems the appropriate thing to do. Yet the question remains--- If expeditions, funded by foreign institutions, or foreign governments, had not recovered the artifacts and protected them through conservation, would these artifacts still be underground? or, in private collections? and would the study of ancient civilizations be affected?

Should all collections be returned to their ancestral homes regardless?

DARWIN AND THE ART INSTINCT

2009-06-18T11:26:00.000-04:00

"What can Darwin tell us about artistic creation? To be sure, Darwinian evolution may explain our physical features--the function of the pancreas or the origin of our opposable thumb---but love for Emily Dickinson's poetry, Bach's Chaconne, or Jackson Pollock's One: Number 31, 1950? The idea that humans have a mating instinct---perhaps. A maternal instinct, maybe. But and art instict? The very idea Seems oxymoronic. "
----Dennis Dutton

Dennis Dutton has taken evolutionary science, Darwinian principles, to be precise, and applied them, in a provocative way, to human appreciation of the Arts: music, literature, poetry, and particularly painting.

His assertion that "our love of Beauty is inborn, and many artistic tastes are universal across cultures--such as the preference for landscapes that feature water and distant trees, like the savannah where we first evolved.."
is based primarily on a study conducted in 1993 by Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, two expatriate soviet artists who received money from the Nation Institute to study the artistic preferences of people in ten countries. Based on his research and polling results they came up with "America's Most Wanted painting" a composite of the ideal painting based on their findings.

Dutton contends that we must "premise art criticism on an understanding of human evolution, not on abstract "theory".

Dennis Dutton is the founder and editor of the website
Arts & Letters Daily, he is also founder of Philosophy and Literature. He is a professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury, New Zeland.

JUST SAY NO! ....TO GOOGLE?

2009-06-15T10:50:00.000-04:00

They say don't bite the hand that feeds you right?
Well let's see how long this entry will last in this blog Hosted by Google's Blogger!

A story on the New York Times website (and probably in their printed newspaper) tells of a relationship that Google wants to start with illustrators, to "give them the opportunity to showcase their work as 'skins' on Google's Chrome, application." When artists inquired about their fee, Google basically said, we don't pay YOU, we are giving you the opportunity to use OUR platform to show your work to millions....so give us your original work for FREE!

"In a posting to Drawger on April 28, Mr. Gary Taxali bemoaned the Google request — and that some struggling publications were reducing fees to illustrators by nearly half.

“So for you, I give you a special salute that I hope will keep you away because I don’t need your work,” Mr. Taxali wrote, followed by his own drawing of a hand gesture popular with impatient motorists. ---NYTimes

This illustration by Mr Taxali, seems an appropriate response to the arrogant gesture by Google's management. Google's position is basically 'screw you:'

"Google, though rebuffed by more than a dozen illustrators, said in its statement that it had plenty of takers.

“We don’t feel comfortable releasing the names of artists who are participating in the project before it launches,” stated the company, which also declined to give a date when artwork from the program would appear on Google Chrome. “However, we are currently working with dozens of artists who are excited about the opportunity to be involved in this project.” --NY Times

So, let's see here Millionaire Goliath Google wants to mooch from artists that must work hard to come up with 'ORIGINAL' work in order to make, barely make a living in some cases, so that Google can launch another application to add to their bulging coffers.....mmm, let's see.... I say practice your slingshots! ( just a metaphor! for those unfamiliar with the David vs. Goliath bit from that big-old-book)

PAINTED LADY...an oldie but goodie

2009-06-03T08:37:00.000-04:00

A rainy, gray afternoon is a good setting for a mystery involving art theft, murder and mayhem, add to it good acting and excellent cinematography and you have a good excuse not to leave the house.
I dusted off a DVD of the movie "Painted Lady", a 1997 film starring Helen Mirren as Maggie Sheridan, an aging, failed rock star turned sleuth, and sat back to enjoy the fireworks. Granted that Helen Mirren's acting as a feisty, sexy, daring, multi-talented, recovering fallen star, is as convincing as a copy of a Rembrandt, and her beloved "SEB" is as deep as a "post-it note," the film, nevertheless, has its charms for those who enjoy movies involving anything about the art world as I do.

The film does have its merits. A clever cinematographer has interwoven scenes foreshadowing the plot in the movie. A drawing of the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian early in the movie, if you spot it, fortels the fate of Iain Glen, "Seb" or Sebastian, who, like his name sake, St. Sebastian, becomes a "tableau vivant" when his lover ( a mob hit man, it turns out) shoots arrows as he hangs from the ceiling wearing nothing but his "fruit-of -he-loom." (I won't give any more away). Another effective and cleverly done scene is another tableau vivant, recreating David's neo-classic painting "A Marat" during a bath scene with 'the countess" Maggie. If you are familiar with these paintings, (or as one of the more silly scenes --you can recognize a Gainsborough without looking at the label) you'll be amused by the subtle, and not so subtle recreation of famous artworks.

The story is not very sophisticated, but it's fun, like eating cotton candy at a small-town carnival. The movie is long, and the plot keeps going and going, nevertheless, that's what I like about this film, the seemingly endless twists of plot, and the cinematography. There are predictable scenes, like the "discovery" of the Van Dyke, and Maggie's line: "He was great in Mary Poppins"...If it's a gray, rainy day, and you just want to cocoon....check out the Painted Lady.

P.S. The trailers in Youtube do not do it justice, ergo no link to any of them here.

PAUL RAND: THE ARTIST AS DESIGNER

2009-05-29T11:38:00.000-04:00

Born in 1914 in Brooklyn, the son of orthodox Jewish immigrants from Vienna, Rand began drawing as a child and went on to attend Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design, and the New York Art Student's League, where he studied with George Grosz. He opened his own studio in 1935; tow years later he was named Art Director of Esquire. Still in his twenties, he suffered a terrible loss when his identical twin brother, a jazz musician, died in an automobile accident, Rand's own divorce and subsequent remarriage followed not long after. During theses personally turbulent years he remained busy designing layouts for Apparel Arts magazine, as well as covers for he nit-fascist magazine Direction where, between 1938 and 1941, he honed his editorial skills experimenting with increasingly complex political issues--the Nazi seizure of the Sudetenland, for example.

In 1941, at the age of twenty-seven, he left to join the William H. Weintraub advertising agency where he would spend the next thirteen years. Rand was hired as the graphic design consultant for IBM in 1956 (the same year Josef Albers hired him to teach in the graduate design program at Yale) Rand went on to publish

four critically acclaimed books: Thoughts on Design (1946); Paul Rand: A Designer's Art (1985); Design, Form and Chaos (1994) and From Lascaux to Brooklyn (1996) Rand died of cancer in 1996.

RECLINING MOORE RECYLCLED...YIKES!!

2009-05-18T01:24:00.001-04:00

"One of the most audacious British art thefts, the disappearance of a two-tonne Henry Moore sculpture worth £3m, has been solved by police, who believe that the internationally revered Reclining Figure sculpture was melted down and sold for no more than £1,500."

In the movie "The Object of Beauty," a small sculpture by Henry Moore, is stolen from a hotel room by a "blind" chamber maid.
The small sculpture is then stolen by her brother, a teen hoodlum who takes it to a pawnshop where he fails to sell it for scrap so he throws it away on a heap of garbage near his hangout. The owners of the sculpture, two spendthrift lovers hard-up for cash, need to sell the object at auction in order to subsidise their lavish lifestyle.

Eventually, the maid is caught as the thief. She declares she took the bronze because "its beauty spoke to her," the bronze sculpture is recovered from its bed of trash and sold at auction by the couple for $100 thousand, enough money for them to continue to lounge on a beach sipping rum.

Wait a moment! didn't I use the same example in a previous blog about the value of art?... I did! Something about Brancusi and what is considered art, or some mumbo-jumbo like that. So I'm back to the "what if nobody thinks it's a piece of art, What is art?"... Oh no, not again!

In the book "the 12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark" (which I just started reading and will eventually write about soon) the author examines the process a work of art goes through to become a "valuable commodity." So far, according to its author, the process has little to do with the artist's intentions, the artist's talent, or the objects beauty. It has everything to do with branding, merchandising, and schmoozing.

So, the thieves who stole the Reclining Moore did not see the object as the "internationally revered, aesthetically pleasing example of post-war British sculpture, they saw two-tonnes of scrap metal abandoned in an 72 acre plot of land waiting to be taken. And instead of genuflecting, they cut it up and sold it for scrap!

Stealing is against the law, we all know that. Nevertheless, this desecration seems to go beyond petty theft. Destroying a work of art like Reclining Figure, to be gone forever, never to exist as the artist created it, seems an infinitely more egregious calamity.

Granted that "beauty" is in the eye of the beholder, as the saying goes, and continuing with useful cliches, "one man's trash is another man's treasure," surely we must come to terms as human beings with the intrinsic value of works of art. We must respect and care for what they represent: the baby steps in our evolutionary process from barbaric creatures into rational human beings.

This curious incident reminds me that we have a long way to go in this evolutionary process. Think of it: the bronze from this fabulous work of genius may become the raw material for munitions, bullets in the guns that kill, destroy, gone forever, never to exist, fellow human beings in the continuing conflicts around the world and the inner cities!

Art helps us evolve. Its senseless destruction, and its reduction to mere commodity, takes away the precious-little progress we have made in our evolutionary process.

THE 12 MILLION STUFFED SHARK

2009-05-12T08:37:00.000-04:00

"Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a Shark?

Because he can? because it was a good investment? or just because?

Determining the "value" of a work of art, other than its aesthetic value, which may or may not influence its "monetary" value is a tricky matter. Although there are certain similarities to commodities traded in the stock market or any market driven by "supply and demand."

"If I had the sistine Chapel, I could sell it tomorrow half-a-dozen times over" (Joseph Duveen cited on page 33 of "The Art Game Again") The quote is used to illustrate how scarcity or rarity adds to the price of an Art object. Prestige, however, is another. One can go back as far as the fifteenth century to learn how the Medici Collectors, after becoming successful investment bankers, turned to the Arts to achieve that which was previously achieved by birth right.

"Money...does not respect traditional hierarchies. The merest artisan can make a fortune and start strutting around in expensive crimson....But once made, money notoriously seeks that which cannot--supposedly--be bought. ... I wish to be distinguished, but how? Education is a good place to start. Money buys it and it then generates value that goes beyond money. ART ACHIEVES THE SAME ACLHEMY." ("Medici Money" p. 158)

Achieving financial success, perhaps in the market or in any other form, like the Medici family in the fifteenth century who earned their fortune in banking and became famous patrons of the arts, and defacto rulers of Florence, affords the individual the freedom to become an art patron, thus Art becomes the "badge of honor" the measure of taste which grants the owner of an art collection, again, the status previously only gotten by right of birth.

But achieving fame and fortune through art collecting, is not, as Francis Henry Taylor tells us in his book, "The taste of Angels," mere fashion or desire for fame.

"It is a complex and irrepressible expression of the inner individual, a sort of devil of which great personalities are frequently possessed." (p. ix Notice to the Reader)

Nevertheless, in his chapter Millions and Millionaires, after outlining briefly a history of how wealth moved from Italy to the Northern countries, particularly to Germany, because of Nuremberg's position as the center of munitions industry of Europe, he explores the birth of the "Kunstkammern" a Hodge-podge collection of curiosities, containing telescopes, microscopes, as well as the most famous paintings by masters such as Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Rubens....
Most individuals of wealth develop their own "kunstkammern"

"Filled with expensive works of art, furnished by the best dealers, these various German collections are no more distinguishable from one another than were the countless private collections on Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue in the late 1920's before death and taxes had caught up with the profiteers of the First World War."

Thus, the tectonic plates of wealth continue their shift, and with them, the need for the New World magnates ..to lay hands on the power and beauty and immortality--the madness, Henry James called it--of art. "

"He was a plain American citizen, staying at an hotel where, sometimes for days together, there were twenty others like him; but not Pope, no prince of them all had read a richer meaning, he believed, into the character of Patron of Art..." (Henry James cited in Old Masters New World)

With this brief, and rather awkward account, of how shifting fortunes from one family to another, from one continent to the next, I wanted to draw, like an eager know-it-all tracing his ideas on a cocktail napkin, the notion that perhaps there is something to the power and value of works of art that defies the practical. So why would a smart New York investment Banker pay $ 12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark?

Because he can? because it was a good investment? or just because?

The answer: All of the above!

JOHN MARIN: REALIST ABSTRACTIONS

2009-04-12T21:05:00.000-04:00

“Like a painted ship upon a painted ocean.” Coleridge's memorable line used in his Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner relies on his reader's familiarity with cliché paintings of seascapes ubiquitous during his century to convey a vision of stillness.

“A copied sea is not real—the artist having seen the sea—gives us his own seas which are real.” said John Marin. His visions of the sea were not the visions Coleridge wanted us to imagine.

John Marin's seascapes are anything but still, as Martha Davidson wrote, “Marin could paint 'with a tumultuous and pantheistic ardor' capturing in watercolor or oil all the powers of the sea, its terrible beauty, titanic movement and treacherous calm [with] a swift magnificently coordinated calligraphy [that] seems to spring from a source in nature common to the scene itself” ( Martha Davidson quoted in “John Marin the Edge of Abstraction”)

Marin's use of watercolor, a medium that allows for both the careful description of objects and the ability to blur them into hazy washes,to paint his favorite subject, the seascape, which painters from Turner to Monet embraced for its atmospheric effects: sunlight, reflections, darkness, rain and fog, took Marin into forays of abstraction. Marin is often credited with influencing the Abstract Expressionists.

“The imaginative storyteller has given you nothing unless he gives you a real picture of his imaginings. The unrealist gives you sawdust for bread...” (John Marin by John Marin, 1977 p.8)

He had no patience with any kind of art that had its origin in the mind without reference to the outside world. Marin's recognition as an eminent American artist was evident in New York and beyond.

Marin is often credited with influencing the Abstract Expressionists...and beyond:

CHELSEA IN HAVANA

2009-04-05T19:35:00.000-04:00

The profiles of President Obama and a young Fidel Castro, cut from a flat wooden board painted red, are unmistakable.

Leaning against the wall of Havana's Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes before installation, the two sides that form "Castrobama" by New York artist Padraig Tarrant, will be joined into a single head with Castro looking to one side and Obama to the other.

The piece is among more than 30 often whimsical works by American artists being mounted this week for a major exposition that hopes to ride the wave of growing support for better U.S.-Cuba relations under the Obama administration.

Opening Saturday and running through May 17, the "Chelsea Visits Havana" exhibit will be the largest collective display of contemporary American art in Cuba in nearly 25 years.

"It would be wonderful if an opening between the two countries could start with art," Alberto Magnan, the exhibit's American curator, said as workers inside the exhibition space used drills and hammers to open wooden crates containing the works.

Hopes are high among some people on both sides of the Florida Straits for warmer ties between the United States and Cuba under Obama.

The two countries have not had diplomatic relations for nearly five decades, and the Bush administration significantly tightened trade and travel restrictions, making art and other cultural exchanges increasingly difficult in recent years.

Coinciding with the 10th Havana Biennial, the exhibit includes other images the Cuban public will recognize.

There's a jigsaw-puzzle portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, called "Black Che," by Christoph Draeger.

"New Mount Rushmore," by Long-Bin Chen, is a sculpture made with New York City Yellow Pages of the four American presidents featured at Mount Rushmore, plus Obama.

Artist Doug Young, who was helping open the crates, said he was installing a Cold Era-style sculpture of a desk designed by the U.S. military decades ago to launch Titan II nuclear missiles. The desk features a huge white launch button.

"This has been a great chance to visit Havana, which is like the South Bronx and Disneyland all wrapped up into one," said the 35-year-old artist, whose work from the Roebling Hall Gallery in New York's Chelsea neighborhood is being shown outside the United States for the first time.

The exhibit includes works by 30 artists from more than two dozen Chelsea galleries, including the Jack Shainman, Loretta Lux, Charles Cowles and Lehmann Maupin galleries.

Organizers say thousands of Cubans and foreign visitors are expected to see the exhibit during its stay. Admission to the museum is about 4 cents for Cubans and $5.40 for foreigners.

GEORGE SEGAL "the three dimensional Hopper"

2009-04-03T11:16:00.001-04:00

Critic Barbara Rose called George Segal the "three dimensional Edward Hopper" when describing the work of the artist in the PBS documentary "George Segal, An American Still Life."

George Segal, whose career as an artist began as a painter, never took formal courses in sculpture, yet found himself modeling the human figure in plaster as a means of communicating his inner experiences, through his art, to people.
The similarities between Hopper and Segal, perhaps lie partly on the emotional and psychological aspects present in their work, as well as in the "faceless anonymity" shared by their subjects. Another aspect of similarity

may be surroundings in which they place their subject, both with the same elements of simplicity and psychological strength.

It is immediately apparent in the works of Hopper and Segal that the "faceless anonymity" of their subjects is absolutely necessary to convey a universal message that will resonate with any member of the human race.

Describing a scene of one of his works, a plaster man sitting in what appears a gas station, Segal says:

"It looks like every blasted gas station you saw in the country...same Coke machine same oil cans...it is an American experience, well maybe it isn't an American experience it is my experience."

"Always only very few [artists] ....succeed in saying something which will touch the experience of a large number of other people.

"I'm trying to be a human being. I used to idolize artists as demigods, I thought when I was younger that was one of the most magnificent ways a man could spend his life, I still think so, inspite of everything, I don't know why. But gradually it has dawned on me that that art is made by men, not gods or demigods, and ...I'm simply a man speaking to other people."

"Art is non-functional art functions to help us stumble around to understand our existence, I think a minute of existence is miraculous and extraordinary. " George Segal

WORKING WITH TIME ...Andy Goldsworthy

2009-04-02T09:26:00.000-04:00

From time-to-time I check out the DVD "Rivers and Tides" from my local library,
a 'timeless' documentary about the work of Andy Goldsworthy shot about nine years ago.
I say timeless not just because of its description in the liner-notes, but because I can watch it once a year and still have the same reaction each time: "WONDERFUL"

I discovered the work of Andy Goldsowrthy by chance. I often look in my library selection of DVDs for new titles, old titles, unusual titles, catchy titles, that jump at me from the shelf and grab me by the throat. (visiting my local library remains one of my favorite past times) So Andy's DVD jumped to my lap about four years ago, and basically bewitched me with its content.

The director, cinematographer and editor Thomas Riedelsheimer captures not just the essence of Andy Goldworthy's work, but he molds it so well into a work that envelops all your senses and pulls you into the very marrow of the work. After watching a few pithy moments of it you are essentially part of the experience: details of Andy's work are synchronized to a perfect sound track that follows the flow of water and whisper of wind to sensual, voluptuous experiences. And that's just the start.

The visual splendor is greatly enhanced by the insightful dialog of the artist. He talks to the viewer about his credo for making art without proselytizing. Andy's words are revealing ( I feel I have such a deep relationship with the artist, despite never having met him, that I can call him 'Andy' without blushing) they are pregnant with meaning, despite their deceivingly plain and down-to-earth disguise. His words reach deep into your very being to reveal the "magical relationship between art and nature" as well as the artist's relationship to nature.

Nature and the artist are one. At times I could feel the pain of Andy's frost-bitten fingers as he works on his visually intoxicating creations. After watching the video you'll feel the need to go out and play in the mud, jump into puddles, do snow-angles and build sand castles, just like you did when you were four-years-old!

The clip below is just a glimpse, it does no justice to the whole:

Portrait of William Shakespeare found

2009-03-29T21:56:00.000-04:00

Professor Stanley Wells, Chairman of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and one of the world’s leading experts on Shakespearian studies, today announced the discovery of a portrait of William Shakespeare, which he believes is almost certainly the only authentic image of Shakespeare made from life.

The newly discovered picture has descended for centuries in the same family, the Cobbes. It hung in their Irish home, under another identification, until the 1980s, when it was inherited by Alec Cobbe who was a co-heir of the Cobbe estate and whose heirlooms were transferred into a trust. In 2006 Alec Cobbe visited the National Portrait Gallery exhibition ‘Searching for Shakespeare’ where he saw a painting that now hangs in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington. It had been accepted as a life portrait of Shakespeare until some 70 years ago, but fell from grace when it was found to have been altered. Mr Cobbe immediately realised that this was a copy of the painting in his family collection.

IF A TREE FALLS IN THE FOREST......

2009-03-29T20:44:00.000-04:00

There are few blogs I follow, actually, I'm lying there are NO blogs I follow regularly, except for one, it's the blog of book author Lois Lowry ( self portrait on left.) I began peeking into the life of this extraordinary children's books author after writing to her for advice on the appropriateness of one of her books for my kid. Ever since I discovered that she kept a blog, I stop in now-and-then and read some of the postings. It's almost like stopping by a friend's house and chatting over a "cup of tea," as she puts it on her web page.

Blogging is such an unusual phenomenon, yet so convenient. I wish I had had the opportunity, for instance, to blog with, say Robert Frost or Picasso, how exciting, that would have been!
I have books of correspondence, and diaries of authors and artists which I enjoy diving into, but unfortunately it's a "simplex" conversation, in the parlance of data transfer, I cannot contribute or leave comments, as one can do on blogs.

There is something therapeutic about blogging. Maybe it has something to do with the narcissistic notion that someone actually cares about what you blog about. There's a saying that there are very few people in the world worth writing biographies about, well, blogs and the Internet are giving the rest of those people a chance to be heard. Nevertheless, "if a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it....." That's right, what if there are no "readers" of your blog, should you continue? Well, the way I see it, in the words of the bard Thomas Gray:

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

BLOG ON!

AMAZING DIGITAL ART

2009-03-23T15:03:00.000-04:00

This award winning short was created by filmmaker Bruce Branit, widely known as the co-creator of '405'. World Builder was shot in a single day followed by about 2 years of post production. Branit is the owner of Branit VFX based in Kansas City.
World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

WILL THE REAL RENOIR PLEASE STAND

2009-03-14T12:45:00.000-04:00

Art dealers often made copies of paintings for their clients who offered the originals up for sale. The story goes like this: The father of Dealer Alexandre Rosenberg bought a spectacular painting by Corot, from 1872, of a beautiful woman dressed in blue on a garden path with a little girl in tow, also dressed in period finery titled "Madame Stumpf and her Daughter," from the little girl in the painting, then a grown woman. Upon giving up the painting, she had asked him to have a very good copy made for her to hang in her chateau. Evidently the copy was so good that decades later it fooled the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They were on the verge of buying it. But because this copy had by then assumed the Rosenberg provenance, Henri Marceau, the museum's chief curator, stopped in to verify it. At which point, Alexandre had an attendant bring the original "Madame Stumpf and Her Daughter" in his possession. This resulted in the museum spurning the copy and the original.

in 1962 the original was included in a show of Corot figure paintings at the Louvre. It was at this time that a man burst into the Rosenberg gallery waving a pistol in the air, shouting "I have the other version of Madame Stumpf, I've got all the money I have in the world tied up in it, and unless you get the Louvre on the phone immediately and tell them you're withdrawing your painting from the exhibition in favor of mine, I'm going to blow my brains out right here in front of you."

Alexandre said to the intruder: " My dear fellow, my heart goes out to you, but even if you shoot yourself, it's not going to make YOUR picture the Corot." The man, then fled. The poor wretch must have bought the copy from whoever had offered it to the Philadelphia museum and panicked when the painting wasn't invited to be in the figure show at the Louvre. The Original Corot, of Madame Stumpf and Her Daughter, was sold to Alisa Mellon Bruce, she paid
$ 275,000 for it. Three years after, in 1969, she bequeathed it to the national Gallery of Art in Washington. It's one of their star Corots. As for the copy, its whereabouts are unknown.

Above are two photographs of Renoir's "The Dance" one is a photograph of the original, the other is a photograph of a reproduction of the original I own. Can you tell which is which?..

FAIR USE OR INFRINGEMENT?

2009-03-13T00:45:00.000-04:00

The Associated Press is alleging copyright infringement for an image of Barack Obama created by street artist Shepard Fairey. Fairey's lawyers say the image is protected under fair-use provisions.

Mr. Fairey has admitted that the photograph taken by Mannie Garcia during a press conference at the National Press Club was the basis for the portrait Fairey created for the HOPE poster that has become the center of the controversy.

Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test. The term "fair use" originated in the United States, but has been added to Israeli law as well; a similar principle, fair dealing, exists in some other common law jurisdictions. Civil law jurisdictions have other limitations and exceptions to copyright.

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature
or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a
whole.

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Yves Saint Laurent's Art Collection

2009-03-05T09:08:00.000-05:00

Yves Saint Laurent's Art Collection of 700-plus works, assembled over 50 years with his lover and business partner Pierre Bergé, will go on the block in a three-day auction that art-world aficionados are referring to as the sale of the century.

Mr Bergé is selling the 731 lots, which the couple collected together over five decades, “without regret and without nostalgia”. He said that since Saint Laurent’s death “there is no longer any reason for it to exist. It is only the collection disappearing. The works will find other collectors.” The collection, which ranges from the 1st century to the 20th, includes Picasso’s Instruments de musique sur un guéridon, expected to sell for ¤25m-¤30m, three Mondrians, Renaissance bronzes, Art Deco furniture and two Chinese figureheads.

Yves Saint Laurent, who reworked the rules of fashion by putting women into elegant pantsuits that came to define how modern women dressed, died Sunday evening June 1, 2008. He was 71.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY and the human figure

2009-02-20T10:31:00.000-05:00

ERIC ANGELOCH

Artists, with their preoccupation of making everything new, turned inward in search of a new aesthetic in the post WWII world crowding out realism and the concerns of the human figure giving way to abstraction. Contemporary artists have turned to new media in a similar search for a new aesthetic in the post-modern world of artistic expression. In their search, they have turned to new technologies like video and digital photography. Eric Angeloch is one of those artists who has found that technology can be fused into the artistic process. His nudes are a marriage of the new technology, in the form of digital prints, and the most traditional methods of using graphite, pastels, oils, and even gold leaf.

The method used to produce his nudes remains traditionally simple, when described by Eric. He starts with a digitally altered photograph which is "drained" of color and background using a computer program, and altered in various ways before it is printed on paper. He then draws and paints over it to achieve the desired results. The resulting creations are moody, simple, lyrical and evocative, nearly abstract in their composition, a mere shadow of the original photograph. " I like the marriage of the two, the more traditional approach and the discoveries the current technology offers" he declares in the Annual 2009 issue of New Art International.

Eric Ageloch's nudes accentuate the beauty of the human figure with a whimsical, lyrical, even sensual feel. His use of gold leaf adds a mystical effect to the sensuousness of the compositions and flowing-lines of the human form. The subdued hues of his drawings, combined with the effects of the digital print, give his creations a "dream like" atmosphere where the consummation of new and traditional elements takes place.

African American Artists

2009-02-19T23:48:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago I was in the middle of a conversation with a colleague when the subject of African American Artists surfaced. I was red-faced to admit that I could not name a single work by an american artists of African descent. Not only that, I came to the realization during my embarrassement, that I could not think of a single name, let alone a work of art or movement. I am aware of the lack of representation in major collections at major museums of works by African American artists, yet I had taken little time to research or to seek out their work.
Here is a small sample from the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC

Jacob Lawrence first studied African art as a young man in New York during the Harlem Renaissance. In 1962 he traveled to Nigeria on an invitation to exhibit his work. In describing the trip, he said, "I became so excited then by all the new visual forms I found in Nigeria—unusual color combinations, textures, shapes, and the dramatic effect of light—that I felt an overwhelming desire to come back as soon as possible to steep myself in Nigerian culture so that my paintings, if I'm fortunate, might show the influence of the great African artistic tradition." It was during a second trip there that Lawrence completed Street to Mbari.

Barkley Leonnard Hendricks was born in Philadelphia, studied there at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and earned BFA and MFA degrees from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Since 1972 he has taught at Connecticut College in New London. The recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, he has exhibited his work at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum at Connecticut College; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.

James Lesesne Wells was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1902 and received BS and MS degrees from Columbia University, New York. He had a long career in printmaking, first participating in the Federal Arts Project, which encouraged the development of the art in the United States during the Great Depression, and then teaching at Howard University in Washington, DC, for almost four decades. Wells was active in the civil rights movement and often depicted the struggles of African-Americans in his work. African Nude, which Wells created late in life, reflects his printmaking skill, interest in traditional African aesthetics, and commitment to representing African-American history and experiences.

Glenn Ligon moved from using the black figure to employing text as a way to explore perceptions and understandings of race. In Untitled: Four Etchings [A–D], Ligon quotes from Zora Neale Hurston's essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" (1928) and Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man (1952). Selections from both literary works are written in the first person, often repeating the word "I." In the process of deciphering the text, the viewer becomes the "I" and thus inhabits the person questioning himself/herself and his/her identity.

Kara Walker Born in Stockton, California, in 1969, Walker moved to Atlanta, Georgia, at age thirteen. Her transition from an integrated town to the racially divided atmosphere of the South had a profound impact on her. She received her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, having begun her exploration of the silhouette while in school. At age twenty-seven, Walker received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation award. Her first retrospective exhibition was at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 2007.

Bob Thompson attended the University of Louisville in Kentucky before moving to New York City in 1959. In New York he studied the old masters at the city's museums and became friends with luminaries such as jazz musician Ornette Coleman and multimedia artist Red Grooms. Thompson traveled to Europe on a fellowship, painting Tree in Paris. Like Tree, many of his paintings are renditions of old master compositions. Sadly, Thompson died in Rome of complications after gallbladder surgery at the age of twenty-nine, cutting short his promising career.

Dear Mr. President .. could you sit..

2009-02-12T09:08:00.000-05:00

Photographer Matthew Brady sent a letter to then President Abraham Lincoln requesting that he drop by for a sitting.

"Dear sir I have repeated calls every hour in the day for your photograph, and would regard it as a great favor if you could give me a sitting to day so that I may be able to exhibit a large portratit at the 4th." wrote Brady in a note sent to Lincoln in March of 1863.

Abraham Lincoln, who celebrates his 200th birthday on this day, was not camera shy. In fact, it is said that he understood the power of the image, and took advantage of opportunities to have his picture taken in order to use during his campaign. It could be argued that he was ahead of his time in taking advantage of publicity to reach the populace during his presidential campaign.

President Lincoln apparently obliged and arrived to Brady's studio to get his photo taken, obviously, in this famous photograph, he did not sit.

"NATURAL SELECTION?"

2009-02-11T08:40:00.000-05:00

The provocative Mr. Charles Darwin was not much of a draftsman, as one can see from his notebooks:

"I think

Case must be that one generation then should be as many living as now. To do this & to have many species in same genus (as is) requires extinction.
Thus between A & B immense gap of relation. C & B the finest gradation, B & D rather greater distinction. Thus genera would be formed. — bearing relation"

Yet his sketch of the "tree" of Survival of the fittest, remains one of the most influential, and controversial, little sketches in the history of the human race. It can be found in Mr. Darwin's "notebook B" as "a branching tree." The 200th anniversary of Mr. Darwin's ideas is upon us. 200 years, which in evolutionary time---if we take Darwin's theories seriously-- is less than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction to infinity of a nano-second?

Who knows, I don't. But in our lifetime, 200 years is two generations. Two generations in the evolution of ideas can be huge. If we think in terms of the evolution of Artistic ideas, theories, and aesthetics, we can see how in two generations Art has gone from "ape to homosapiens" in Darwinian parlance. If we think of Art in a "tree" like evolutionary form, there is some resemblance to the evolutionary tree in Darwin's notebook. Art, in all its forms has evolved; influenced by ideas, techniques, technology, ideology, and history. An evolution that continues and will continue for as long as the former "quadruped, living in trees" maintains a critical and open mind.

Now, before you set out to "flame" this blog for its "Darwinian" bent, think...what if we hadn't developed opossible thumbs? could we text what's in our mind?!

JAN FABRE at the Luvre

2009-02-10T00:07:00.000-05:00

Born 1958, Antwerp, Belgium is a Belgian multidisciplinary artist, playwright, stage director, choreographer and designer.

Jan Fabre was recently invited to showcase his work amid the historical collections of the Louvre Museum in Paris. Fabre is the first contemporary artist invited to install his work amid the permanent collection.

"The choice was natural" reports SCULPTURE magazine in its most recent issue. "Fabre's drawings, sculptures, and videotaped performances are diverse in form feeling and content allowing for a wide range of confrontations with historical objects" Michael Amy states in the article.

The idea of allowing the work of contemporary artists to co-exists, albeit temporarily, with objects of historically renowned artists, is not necessarily a new method used by museums curators with the hope of giving their audiences--many that would not seek the work of contemporary artists, an opportunity to explore the recent forms of artistic expression.

Michael Amy points out that "Fabre shares with many earlier masters a taste for preciousness, outstanding craftsmanship, and symbolisms." It is fair to say that the imperative for curators is to choose the work of contemporary artists that share certain aesthetic aspects to "bridge" the old with the new, thus allowing the viewer to observe aesthetic values present in the old, in contrast to the contemporary.

"It takes nerve to present a cross-section of one's oeuvre in such august company. The risks are considerable." declares Michael Amy suggesting that the idea of having the work of a contemporary artist amid the work of masters whose works have survived the test of time, could prove to be disastrous, in terms of an audience's reactions to the inclusion, or intrusion of " contrasts in form, content, feeling or quality of the contemporary works chosen by curators.

"There could be blood." writes Michael Amy, in a pseudo metaphorical fashion, as he continues to describe Jan Fabre's figure of the artist, shown at the entrance of the exhibition, with its nose pressed against the pane glass protecting a copy of a lost portrait by Rogier van der Weyden, "blood dripping from his nostrils and gathering in a puddle at his feet (I Drain Myself of Myself, (dwarf) 2007)"