Root of the Problem

Kate MccGwire - Artist

2011-11-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

Kate MccGwire_US from Beck's Green Box Project on Vimeo.

Illustration Isn't Art but Illustrators Are Artists

2011-09-10T06:49:00.000-07:00

by Artist Gary Taxali

The following is from an interview with Gary Taxali - it is fantastic.

Have you always been able to draw or was it a skill you learned in college? I don’t think one can learn to draw in college. While they’re certainly honed in art school, if one doesn’t possess basic drawing skills no amount of school will help. However, one can learn how to better see and connect that to two dimensional interpretations in order to effectively communicate.

What was your first paid assignment? It was a spot illustration for Toronto Life magazine on male aggression. I was still a student and didn’t know how the whole sketch/final thing worked with art directors. I basically walked into the art director’s office and presented her with three originals with no prior sketches sent. She laughed, picked one and explained to me in two minutes how illustrators work with clients. I learned more in those two minutes than I did in four years of a dysfunctional art school education.

by Artist Gary Taxali

Which illustrator (or fine artist) do you most admire? Nevermind artists. I admire rock musicians. My goal is to go back in time and be Wayne Kramer from MC5. (I can’t play a guitar though, so maybe things are best left the way they are.)

What would you be doing if you weren’t an illustrator? I used to work for Canada Post on the loading docks. I don’t really have any other skills so I guess stacking mail bags infested with mites and rat droppings would have been my day job.

From where do your best ideas originate? The Junction—an area northwest of the city core of downtown Toronto. It’s next to the train tracks and in a Portuguese neighborhood filled with churrasco joints. Home sweet home.

How do you overcome a creative block? Who has the luxury of time for creative blocks when you have a string of perpetual deadlines chasing you? I admire those who have time to dissect the minutiae of their creative exploits. No working illustrator has that luxury.

In one word describe how you feel when beginning a new assignment? Sexy.

Do you have a personal philosophy? What did Bill Murray say in Meatballs? Oh yeah, “It just doesn't matter.”

Do you have creative pursuits other than illustration? I’m a DJ and that gives me sheer joy. No requests, please.

by Artist Gary Taxali

What music are you listening to right now? “Sugar Sandwich” by Toronto’s own The Leather Uppers. It’s garage rock brilliance.

What's your favorite quote? “We've gone on holiday by mistake” --Withnail (from Bruce Robinson's film Withnail and I)

Do you have any advice for people just entering the profession? Perseverance is your ticket to a successful career. Create personal work, at least one piece every week. Your ideas are better than any art director’s so don't let them feed you concepts. Style should not drive the picture; the picture should drive the style. Illustration isn't art but illustrators are artists. Don’t ponder why some people do bad work and become household names, it’s the nature of the industry. Lastly, if you don’t feel sexy, you don’t look sexy.

What’s one thing you wish you knew when you started your career? Nobody knows, better than me, what’s good for my career. Well, Steve Heller does—but nobody else.

http://www.commarts.com/insights/illustration-isn-art.ht

Holding your pencil

2011-08-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

7 principles of comedy/design/creating anything via Design Observer

2011-05-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

Several people called us about HBO’s hour-long special “Talking Funny” in which four great comedians — Ricky Gervais, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock and Louis C.K. — talk shop for an hour. Our friends were all struck by how the “inside” of comedy echoes the process of making just about anything truly creative. Before we got to watch it, we found Michael Beirut‘s insightful post on Design Observer: Seven Things Designers Can Learn from Stand Up Comics. We’d change “Designer” to “Any Creative Person Who Is Trying to Make Something Great”; these 7 principles apply to way beyond comedy and design. We’ve printed the whole thing here, highlighted the essentials AND left it to you to fill in blanks. But it’s WORTH reading every word, especially Louis C.K.’s riff on the F word and Corvette’s in #4. Illuminating and really funny. (If you don’t get HBO, you can watch Talking Funny in 4 parts on YouTube. We also recommend Louis C.K.s beautiful ‘everything is so amazing, but nobody is happy’)

1. It’s all about the basics.

“I love jokes so much,” says Jerry Seinfeld towards the beginning of the show. “I love them so much.” He loves them because they’re the indestructible building blocks of comedy. The others agree. “So many of these young guys think it’s all attitude,” says Chris Rock. “But you have to have jokes under your weird persona, under your crazy glasses, under your crazy voice.” ~~Design~~ _____has basic building blocks too: scale, proportion, hierarchy, contrast. Get those right first. Or, as Seinfeld concludes: “You can put in all kinds of furniture, but you have to have steel in the walls.”

2. Once you’ve mastered the basics, make your work your own.

“Do you think you have to have a thing?” asks Ricky Gervais.”Well, you’ve gotta figure something out,” responds Seinfeld. Between all the “things” and “somethings,” we know exactly what they’re talking about. Every successful comedian is different. The best have an immediately identifiable attitude, whether it’s Henny Youngman, Demetri Martin, or the four participants in “Talking Funny.” The best designers are no different. Think of how many ways there are to design something like, say, a Vladimir Nabokov book cover. A good ~~designer~~ _____is a problem solver. A great ~~designer~~ _____can figure out a way to solve a problem that’s completely unique. At one point, Seinfeld tells a Louis C.K. joke his way, and asks, “Is that how it goes?” Louis CK replies, “Well, that’s a completely Seinfelded version. You made it…nice.” It’s one of my favorite parts of the show.

3. Respect your audience.

Chris Rock says: “A lot of comedians have great jokes, and they’re like, ‘Why is this not working?’ It’s not working because the audience doesn’t understand the premise. If I set this premise up right, this joke will always work.” The comics talk about ensuring the audience — so demanding, so easily distracted — is with them for every joke during the act. This doesn’t mean talking down or pandering. Rather, it’s good old-fashioned respect. I sometimes tell students that every ~~design~~ _____needs a welcome mat and a doorknob. The first helps a person realize, “Hey, this is for me.” The second gives them a way into the ~~design~~ _____. Good ~~design~~ _____, like good comedy, is about surprise. But surprise can’t happen in a vacuum. It needs a context that establishes familiarity. If you respect your audience, you provide that context.

4. Know your tools.

The tools of a stand up comic are words. Some [tools] are good for every job. Some are more powerful and should be used sparingly. All of them are potentially crutches. Louis C.K. says that Jerry Seinfeld once told him, “The F word is like a Corvette.” “And I thought,” says Louis C.K., “that means that it’s fast and it’s cool and it’s got power and thrust to it. But then I thought, wait a minute, this guy grew up on Long Island and collected Porsches. So to him, a Corvette is a piece of shit, with a Chevy engine, just a flashy bullshit car.” Your own favorite tool may be a typeface, or a Photoshop effect, or a certain color combination. Seinfeld says he stopped using the F word when he realized it had become a crutch. Of course, one man’s crutch is another man’s secret weapon. Or, as Louis C.K. observes, “Where I grew up, a Corvette is an awesome car.”

5. Honor your craft.

One striking running theme of “Talking Funny” is that each of the comics works extremely hard, creating challenges where they might just as easily coast. Chris Rock reinvents his entire show every year. Louis C.K. regularly takes his closing bit — the strongest part of his show — moves it to the beginning, and forces himself to create a new show designed to top the old climax. Ricky Gervais says, “Oh, it’s not just being funny. It’s being proud of your stuff and doing things that other people couldn’t do.” Louis C.K. adds that, for him, “Easy laughs, cheap laughs, they don’t exist.” Chris Rock: “How many unfunny comedians have ever sustained a career not being funny?” Mastery of craft is tied to perpetual self-improvement. And, just as in ~~design~~ _____, mere technique is never enough. Louis C.K. is nervous when he feels he’s relying on technical skill. “This bit is working because I know how to do stand up, not because it’s something that’s important to me.” Hone your skills, but make certain they serve ends that are important to you.

6. Don’t be afraid of failure.

Good comedians experiment constantly. Every time they test a new joke, they risk bombing. That’s why they’ll try out new material in smaller venues, polishing pieces in front of live audiences: they need to hear what’s working and what’s not working. Seinfeld admits that when he was starting out, “I was hitting 500. I would have a good show and a bad show, a good show and a bad show.” His very first show was bad. “But success wasn’t my objective.” He was desperate to simply be on stage, and was willing to risk failure every other night to get there. Designers take risks for the same reasons. Trying something new means not being sure of the outcome. But it’s the only way that anyone working in a creative field can hope to make progress. Ambition is a strong enough antidote to fear. Louis C.K. remembers how he idolized good comics: “I wanted to be one of them, and I didn’t care if I sucked at it.”

7. Finally, never forget you have a special gift.

Ricky Gervais, in a revealing moment, asks, “Don’t you ever think, when we make people have this feeling of laughter, and they pay us money: what if they discover they can do it themselves?” The other comics are rather stunned at this. Seinfeld shouts, “But they can do it themselves!” Gervais, almost glumly asks, “Then why are they paying us?” Louis C.K. answers, “We’re a high octane version of it. We’re pros. They can play touch football, too.” And Seinfeld adds: “But that doesn’t hurt the NFL.” We live at a time when the tools of design are more available than ever before. What client doesn’t have a nephew who knows InDesign, or, better still, a spouse with a newly discovered enthusiasm for Powerpoint? Graphic design: anyone can do it, right? Well, yes. But the professionals still understand what it means to do something well. And that confidence makes its own statement.

Near the end of the show, Chris Rock talks about what a pleasure it is to watch anyone do anything really well, even a great truck driver. “I just saw this guy park an 18-wheeler into this narrow space,” he says. “And I said I guarantee you there’s heart surgery that’s not as hard as what this guy just did.” Louis agreed. “I watched a guy pull into a loading dock, and I stopped and said, ‘That was amazing.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, I know, I know.’” If you’re a designer, it’s easy to forget that what you do is, in so many ways, amazing. Appreciate that gift in yourself. Appreciate the gifts of others. And look for lessons wherever you can find them.

via Design Observer

Artist: Anish Kapoor

2011-05-15T11:21:00.000-07:00

Anish Kapoor unleashes whale-like monster on Paris by Vicky Buffery

PARIS | Tue May 10, 2011 8:41pm IST

PARIS (Reuters Life!) - Entering Anish Kapoor's latest sculpture through a dark, windowless revolving door, visitors experience a momentary blackout before emerging into a womb-like cavity -- warm, oppressive and bathed in red light.

This is "Leviathan" at Paris's Grand Palais, the Mumbai-born British sculptor's first work in France for 30 years, to be unveiled to the public on Wednesday, and an experience one can only imagine is like being swallowed by a whale.

Famed for his critically acclaimed Cloud Gate in Chicago and Sky Mirror in New York, Kapoor is the fourth artist to be invited by the Grand Palais to create the annual Monumenta exhibition in its vast, glass-roofed central nave.

Previous exhibitors at the historic Art Nouveau building, erected for the 1900 World Fair, were Christian Boltanski in 2010, Richard Serra in 2008 and Anselm Kiefer in 2007.

"It's fabulous. It's a challenging space and that's the main motivation for me," Kapoor told Reuters on the sidelines of a preview of the exhibition.

In an interview with British media earlier on Tuesday, Kapoor dedicated his installation to artist Ai Weiwei, calling Ai's arrest and detention by Chinese authorities "barbaric" and urging museums and galleries to close for a day in protest.

Ai, an outspoken critic of China's human rights record, has not been heard of since he was detained at Beijing airport on April 3.

"This takes us back to a Soviet-style time when the voice of artists was seen as dangerous," Kapoor told the BBC.

ARCHAIC FORCE

Inside Leviathan, the viewer is invited to take part in a physical and mental experience, a sensory immersion in a translucent membrane designed to interact with the architecture of the building in which it is housed.

The red glow is created by daylight flooding from the nave's glass roof and through the sculpture's tent-like walls, and its intensity, as well as the temperature in the cavity, vary as clouds pass over the sun.

From the outside, however, Leviathan offers a completely different experience, a feeling of awe at the overwhelming scale of the bulbous, rubber-like installation, which stands 35 metres (yards) high and fills the entire 35,000 sq metres (376,700 sq ft) of the nave.

"For me, this huge archaic force is linked to darkness. It is a monster burdened with its corpse, which stands guard over some forgotten regions of our conscience," Kapoor explains.

Perhaps reminiscent of the intimate, womb-like interior, however, there is still something faintly erotic about the outside of the sculpture and it is hard to shake off the feeling one is looking at a giant, three-balled massage device, rather than a mythical sea-monster.

But as Kapoor says in a blurb on his work:

"I think there is no such thing as an innocent viewer. All viewing, all looking comes with complications, comes with previous histories, a more or less real past."

(Reporting by Vicky Buffery; editing by Paul Casciato)

Leviathan is 35 metres high and comprised of tautly-stretched PVC over a giant metal frame and is the highlight of the exhibition which opens tomorrow and runs until June 23.People can walk around it and inside it.

Kapoor said: 'My ambition is to create a space within a space, responding to the great height and light of the nave of the Grand Palais.

'People will be invited to enter the artwork to immerse themselves in its colour and it will be I hope a contemplative, poetic experience.'

http://gu.com/p/2p2xc

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1385590/Anish-Kapoor-Leviathan-sculpture-unveiled-Grand-Palais-Paris.html

Sir Ken Robinson Lecture

2011-05-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

June 8, 2011 • 7:30 pm

MATRIX:MIDLAND Festival 2011 Events

SIR KEN ROBINSON: The Element:
How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

Sir Ken Robinson's 2009 breakthrough book about talent, passion, and achievement provides a real platform for our futures. It is essential information for anyone with children, unfulfilled dreams or a life still to live. The video of his famous 2006 TED Conference talk has been seen by an estimated 200 million people in over 150 countries. It is currently listed on the TED website as the most favored video of all time. A public reception in the Brick Lobby will immediately follow the presentation.

"Ken Robinson is probably the most gifted communicator on earth when it comes to explaining the value of creativity." ~Governor Mike Huckabee

TICKETS:
Adults $30 | Students $18

Artist: Zhu Ming

2011-05-14T20:18:00.001-07:00

ZHU MING :

MOUNTAIN ROCK SERIES

CURATED BY WU HUNG

June 2 - July 9, 2011

opening reception: June 2 (5-8pm)

Image:10 o'clock July 27, 2008 No. A, In Xiaogling Liangshanzhou Sichuan, China, Photograph

Chicago, Illinois : Mountain Rock Series by Zhu Ming curated by Wu Hung.

The exhibition Mountain Rock Series is a titillating combination of photos, videos and paintings by Beijing artist Zhu Ming. His signature style balloon performances are juxtaposed alongside his recent paintings which examine the dual roles of illusion and reality and their interchangeable nature. Foremost contemporary art scholar Wu Hung curated the exhibition. The show opens Thursday June 2nd from 5-8 pm. The artist and curator will be present.

Zhu Ming moved to Beijing as a teenager in 1992 "for art." He became an active member of the East Village artist community, which was the founding place in China for experimental art of all kinds. Zhu Ming created a few key performances using bubbles before being arrested and detained by the Chinese police for 3 months in 1994. However several years after his arrest, Zhu Ming transitioned from bubbles to balloons creating his signature style of performance in which he submerges himself in a sealed balloon that is gradually filled with water. Walsh Gallery's exhibition will show several photos and videos which document these extraordinary performances both in China and abroad. The performances took place in a series of environmentally challenging surroundings, namely in the sea and on mountains. Each performance required great presence of mind as well as challenged the artist's basic survival since there was only a limited amount of air in the balloons. Once Mr. Zhu even created a fire inside of the balloon for the effect of smoke.

Zhu Ming has always been intrigued by concepts of self-isolation, nihilism, and the time-space continuum. Before beginning his newest paintings called Mountain Rock Series, the artist created a series of performances in which he covered himself with toxic fluorescent powder and photographed himself in total darkness. These performances examined the interdependent nature of reality and illusion. It was these philosophical explorations that lead to his current paintings Mountain Rock Series.

These paintings juxtapose more traditional renderings of mountains made by conventional material with those same renderings glowing under fluorescent lighting controlled by a timer. The lighted presentation of the mountains is symbolic of 3 gateways: The first is a "material gateway" which can be seen in a realistically lighted presentation, the second is a "spiritual gateway" which is best seen in the absence of light, and the third is a "gateway of games and rules" which is seen through the interaction of environmental factors and people.

Zhu Ming's performances helped define the genre in performance art in China for future generations. His performances have been seen around the world including the Tate Modern (London), The Victoria and Albert Museum (London), ICP(New York), Museum of Modern Art (Denmark). In 2009 Mr. Zhu was invited to do one of his balloon performances on the beach for Miami Basel. Additionally Zhu Ming has participated in seminal exhibitions both in China and abroad including Fuck Off (Shanghai) and Between Past Present and Future : New Photography and Video From China (New York - Chicago - Berlin - Santa Barbara). Zhu Ming lives and works in Beijing.

Zhu Ming - Bubble Series [performance] (2003 in Sydney)

Zhu Ming flings his frail naked self into the throws of modern life via an inflated, translucent womb and carefully engineered umbilical cord. His visceral performances courageously deconstruct respected icons of confidence by confronting isolation instead of covering it with pristine silk suits and carefully-pruned avenues. Tear off your clothes and feel the wind. Your age-associated neural modulation of hormones will thank you for redefining what it means to be respectable and adult.

Zodiac Heads and an ARTnews article

2011-05-09T03:15:00.000-07:00

Librado Romero/The New York Times

Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, at the Pulitzer Fountain outside the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, features 12 animal heads in cast bronze.

The installation will be on display in Central Park from May 2nd- July 15th

The sculptural works are comprised of 12 monumental bronze animal heads inspired by the fountain clock at the 18th century Chinese imperial retreat of Yuanming Yuan just outside of Beijing. The heads will be placed at the historic Pulitzer Fountain in Grand Army Plaza in front of the Plaza Hotel on 59th Street and 5th Avenue.

The original 18th century piece was created by two European Jesuits at the request of Manchu Emperor Qianlong and portrays the animals of the Chinese Zodiac each spouting water for two-hour intervals from their mouth. In 1860 Yuanming Yuan was pillaged by French and British troops during the Second Opium War and the heads were plundered. Today seven heads have been found including the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, horse, monkey, and boar. The location of the other five heads is unknown. (It should be recalled that the rat and the rabbit were offered at a sale of Yves Saint Laurent Collection at Christie’s in February 2009 and were purchased for $19 million by Cai Mingchao, an advisor to China’s National Treasures Fund who then refused to pay.)

Ai Weiwei has re-interpreted the 18th century works on an oversize scale addressing issues of repatriation and the looting of ancient artifacts. “My work is always dealing with real or fake, authenticity and value and how value relates to current political and social understandings and misunderstandings. However, because Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads is composed of animal heads, it’s a work that everyone can understand, including children and people who are not in the art world. I think it’s more important to show your work to the public. That’s what I really care about,” said Ai Weiwei in a recent statement.

His 12 heads are cast in bronze and placed on bronze bases each weighing approximately 800 pounds with measurements of 4 feet high and 3 feet wide. They stand at 10 feet high when the base and the head are brought together exerting a monumental presence for the gateway to Central Park. “It’s a busy area, so it can be seen by ordinary people, but also it’s not exactly an art center. I like that people can notice it and at the same time, not to bother them too much,” said the artist of the new location in recent interview with the NY Times.

Animal Circle/ Zodiac Heads are presented by the Chinese Contemporary Art Organization AW in cooperation with the City of New York. They were previously displayed at the 29th Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil this past September. “It is innovative and thought-provoking exhibits like Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads that keep New York one of the world’s great places to live, work and visit,” said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in a recent interview. After its New York City exhibition the works will travel to London’s Somerset House, Los Angeles’ LACMA, Houston’s Hermann Park, Pittsburg’s Warhol Museum, and Washington D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

The twelve Zodiac Heads/Circle of Animals by Ai Weiwei are cast in bronze and positioned on circular bronze bases.

ARTnews
this link brings you to Crossing the Line in China by Barbara Pollack

Nicholas Logsdail, director of the Lisson Gallery, talks about a forthcoming exhibition of the artist's work and his growing influence on the global stage.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
The Observer, Sunday 8 May 2011

Ai Weiwei: ‘He’s committed and idealistic, and unaccepting of injustice to the point of self-denial.’ Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

My last conversation with Ai Weiwei took place in January. My colleague Greg Hilty and I went to Beijing for three days to make selections for the forthcoming show at the Lisson Gallery, and we got a sense of great foreboding from him. He had been placed under house arrest in November and had subsequently been released, but he was already worried about whether he'd get out of the country. He had all these commitments abroad – in Berlin, in New York, and with us in London – and he was very concerned about fulfilling them.

There was a discussion then about whether we should do the show now or delay it for a year so that he could produce an entirely new body of work. We decided to go ahead because there was an urgency to it, due to his situation at home, and we wanted to give a London audience a sense of the range of his work and the thinking behind it.

In my opinion, Ai Weiwei is one of the major artists of the early 21st century. My gallery avoided the gold rush for Chinese art in the boom years because, in my experience, it's almost always a false premise to group artists together by generation or nationality. What's important is the quality of the individual artist, and it was clear to us that Ai Weiwei stood apart. He's not just the most important Chinese artist of his generation but a truly international figure.

His work is a very interesting blend of traditionalism and liberalism, with a revolutionary bent. He has an outspoken nature, which is what has got him into trouble, but my reading is that his primary impulse is less to overturn society than to improve it. He is unwilling to keep quiet in the face of ignorance and prejudice and he speaks out against injustice wherever he finds it.

I've met him on a number of occasions over the last couple of years. When we were preparing for the show, I found him to be highly practical and thoroughly professional. He is a serious man of few words but he has an ironic sense of humour. He's also a big guy, physically, with a barrel chest and a commanding presence. We had some very interesting conversations about the time he spent living in New York in considerable hardship. He was an exile, partly by choice, partly out of necessity because of his family's political problems in China. It was a gestation period, a time of growth. He was taking stock of the bigger world and putting his house in order, as an artist and an intellectual.

He may not think of himself as an intellectual, but I would certainly describe him as one. Although he can be irrational himself, he despises irrationality and tries to give a clear and logical approach to the issues that are important to him. He's committed and idealistic, and unaccepting of injustice to the point of self-denial – allowing himself to get into this position is surely a form of self-denial.

All the arrangements for the show had been made before his arrest, but it feels rotten putting it on in his absence. We've been praying, metaphorically speaking, that some news of his whereabouts would break, but nothing has: it's been total silence since his detention.

The outpouring of respect and admiration for him, his honesty, his bravery – maybe you could say his foolhardiness as well – have been completely astonishing. Many other artists have shown their solidarity, including Anish Kapoor who has dedicated his forthcoming Grand Palais show in Paris to Ai Weiwei. The best we can do now is to maintain our support for him and keep up the pressure. It's crucial that all the planned projects go ahead – his work is also showing in New York and, from next week, at Somerset House in London.

How do we put ourselves into the heads of the Chinese authorities who are responsible for his arrest? How do we reach them? What is it that we need to say to them? In arresting Ai Weiwei, I believe they have failed to understand what it means to be an artist. They have failed to be culturally aware. He is exactly the kind of person they should have onside. He's actually much more dangerous now, under arrest, than he ever was before. I think he is a great global cultural ambassador for the new China, but this arrest is making China's new cultural revolution look rather unrevolutionary.

They have accused him of tax evasion, bigamy and spreading pornography on the internet, but these charges are clearly trumped up. If you want to nail somebody and put them away for a while, you can probably find dirt on anybody on the planet, let alone a controversial artist like Ai Weiwei. Some people have commented that the Chinese government saw what was going on in north Africa and the Middle East and got nervous. That may well explain his arrest.

I am hopeful though – that he's in a reasonable state and can speak for himself; he's an intelligent man and should be able to provide arguments for his release. Although of course it's not going to get you anywhere if you're talking to a brick wall. What's so distressing about this situation is that there is no obvious authority that one can appeal to or challenge about what has happened.

It's so sad that this charismatic, larger-than-life, gentle guy has been arrested. I'm deeply upset. I'd get on the next plane to China if I thought there was anything I could do, and I'm sure loads of people feel the same way.

We have organised a very different series of events from the ones we had originally planned. Alongside the show, we will have a press conference and then a big open party to celebrate Ai Weiwei's work. We will also have a moment of silence to remember his situation, although until he is released I don't think it is going to be far from anyone's mind.

Ceramics at the Ann Arbor Art Museum

2011-04-27T21:13:00.001-07:00

Click on Images to make them larger

http://www.umma.umich.edu/

Woodcuts at the Ann Arbor Museum March 2011

2011-04-27T20:53:00.000-07:00

Ice Surfaces from March 2011

2011-04-24T10:12:00.001-07:00

Pictures I took of the ice covered railing at Niagara Falls – Valentines Day 2011

Sir Ken Robinson and Education

2011-04-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

Quotes by Ken Robinson

'The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.'

"Our task is to educate their (our students) whole being so they can face the future. We may not see the future, but they will and our job is to help them make something of it."

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/iframe&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/ideas-for-modern-living-passion&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/ideas-for-modern-living-passion
http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/

Artists: Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec

2011-04-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Clouds, 2002. Styropor. 105,1 x 187,6 x 40 cm. Courtesy Galerie Kreo, Paris © Paul Tahon und Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec
and the Ideal House exhibition 2004 installation IMM Koln, Germany

http://www.bouroullec.com/

Dolbadarn Castle in Wales

2011-04-12T09:11:00.000-07:00

Dolbadarn Castle by William Turner

Photograph by Alan Novelli, Alamy

Commissioned before A.D. 1230, Dolbadarn Castle in Snowdonia National Park features the best surviving example of a Welsh round tower.

Take a walk on the moors, go horseback riding on ancient trails, or tour a medieval village in one of the U.K.'s 15 national parks. Known as "Britain's breathing spaces," the parks offer outdoor and sightseeing activities against dramatic landscapes and historic treasures.

Antelope and deer images

2011-03-31T20:47:00.000-07:00

Brehm, Alfred Edmund; Pechuel-Loesche, Eduard; Haake, Wilhelm
“Brehms Tierleben. Allgemeine Kunde des Tierreichs. Säugetiere – Dritter Band.”

Reindeer engraving

Asian Illistration

Paulus Potter. Deer in the Wood. 1647

Haekel

Gegenbaurs morphologisches Jahrbuch (1903)

2011-03-31T20:27:00.001-07:00

Goat. by Artist Jacob Jordaens.

2011-03-30T00:10:00.000-07:00

Goat. Jacob Jordaens. Flemish, 1593 – 1678. 17th century. Red, black, and yellow chalk, with touches of red and brown wash heightened with white. “This drawing is connected with the painting Adoration of the Shepherds, 1657, in the North Carolina Museum of Art.”

"indigo blue" by artist Ann Hamilton

2011-03-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

“Indigo Blue” consists of roughly 18,000 items of blue cotton work clothing, neatly folded and stacked on a “floating” steel platform at the center of a room."

Salvation of 'Indigo Blue' a triumph for all to see Hamilton's 'Indigo Blue' -- free of cultural limbo

May 27, 2007|By Kenneth Baker

People who encounter an Ann Hamilton installation work tend never to forget it.

I can clearly recall pieces of hers that I saw in San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Pittsburgh and -- in two settings -- in New York.

So it stunned me to learn from Hamilton that "very little of my installation work has survived in any way. The Hirshhorn (Washington, D.C.) has a piece, but there's not a lot. I think it's not perceived as the kind of thing that has a longer life. So to enter the conversation about what it means to revisit something like this and bring it forward is a really great thing for me to be able to do."

I recently spoke with Hamilton, 50, while she was working on reconstructing "Indigo Blue" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the work was originally made in 1991 for a citywide show in Charleston, S.C.

SFMOMA hopes to acquire "Indigo Blue" in its current manifestation, rescuing it from recycling and cultural amnesia. Score another sharp collection-building move for curator Madeleine Grynsztejn if it happens.

Critical and curatorial consensus as to Hamilton's importance got corroboration from the MacArthur Foundation in 1993, when it put her in the select company of visual artists who have received the so-called genius grant. "It was an enormous gift," Hamilton said, "because it said 'you can keep doing this work that you really love doing.' "

The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art had already staged a major show of her work in 1988.

"Indigo Blue" consists of roughly 18,000 items of blue cotton work clothing, neatly folded and stacked on a "floating" steel platform at the center of a room on SFMOMA's second floor.

At one end of the platform stands an old wood table and chair. From noon to 4 p.m. each day -- except Wednesdays when the museum is closed -- a volunteer sits silently at the table, erasing, thus effectively destroying, the pages of a book: "International Law Situations," a Naval War College publication pertaining to legally defined land and water boundaries. The book connects in Hamilton's thinking with Charleston's history as a seaport but she is also interested in the invisible activity of reading as a reflection of the invisible labor represented by the work clothes. "The books we originally used," as Hamilton said -- she has a boxful -- "are legal documents that mediate the relationship between land and water. That in-between space, and how you occupy the space of the in-between, is still very interesting to me."

from the V.A.

2011-03-13T22:26:00.001-07:00

The Prospect of Whitby, Wapping Wall, E.1., and other river-side buildings (seen from a barge); Recording Britain
Object: Drawing
Place of origin: Wapping Wall (made)
Date: October 1941 (made)
Artist/Maker: Fairclough, Wilfred (artist)
Materials and Techniques: Pen and ink and sepia wash drawing on paper

'Temple of Flora'

2011-03-13T22:13:00.001-07:00

Engraved by Joseph Constantine Stadler (worked 1780-1812) after a painting by Peter Charles Henderson (worked 1791-1829)

'The Maggot Bearing Stapelia, Stapelia sp.'
Plate from Robert John Thornton's 'Temple of Flora'
1801
Colour aquatint with additional colour by hand
Published between 1799 and 1807
Museum no. Circ.524-1967

The Temple of Flora (1799-1807), from which this plate is drawn, remains a highly unusual publication. The illustrations were undertaken by portrait and landscape artists, resulting in some extraordinary images of botanically inaccurate plants placed against fantastical backdrops: an unorthodox device within the conventions of botanical illustration.

Here the Maggot-bearing Stapelia - a plant that produces a putrid odour to attract flies - assumes enormous proportions and is set against a background more akin to a Scottish rock garden than to its native southern African habitat.

Ceramic Artist: Toshiko Takaezu

2011-03-12T10:23:00.001-08:00

"In my life I see no difference between making pots, cooking, and growing vegetables. They are all so related. However there is a need for me to work in clay. It is so gratifying and I get so much joy from it, and it gives me many answers in my life."

NCECA learned from Dan Anderson early Wednesday morning, March 9, 2011 that Toshiko Takaezu had passed away earlier that day in Honolulu, Hawaii. Well known for works of quiet emotional impact that artfully integrate glaze color and surface qualities with austere forms, Toshiko was named an honorary member of NCECA in 1993. Born in 1922 in Pepeekeo on the Big Island, Takaezu's interest in pottery initiated at the Hawaii Potters Guild on Oahu. She attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa before going on to receive her MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art under Maija Grotell. Early in her career, Takaezu developed an approach to art that combines techniquesToshiko Takaezu and sensibilities of both East and West. In the 1950s, she studied in Japan with master potter Toyo Kaneshige. Later, she taught at Cleveland Institute of Art and established studios in Clinton and Quakertown, N.J. In 1992 she retired from teaching at Princeton University from which she was subsequently awarded an honorary doctorate. Her lifelong, passionate dedication to her art and teaching were recognized through a Living Treasure Award from the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii.

From Dan Anderson: NCECA Honorary Member, Toshiko Takaezu died peacefully, under hospice care, this past week, at a convalescent center in Honolulu, Hawaii. She was 88 years old. Much has been written and documented about Toshiko's life and her marvelous ceramics, fiber pieces, bronzes and paintings. Her obvious legacy will certainly be the thousands of her artworks that reside in both public and private collections. She spent the last two years of her life de-accessing her vast inventory of signature ceramic pieces to public collections. Her not-so-obvious gift will be the impact she has had on the contemporary ceramics community, particularly female ceramic artists. Never marrying, she was still able to have a large "family" consisting of her former apprentices, students and many, many friends. An apprentice once remarked, "Toshiko was mother to us all!" Words like passion, commitment, loyalty, dedication, caring, altruistic, toughness and love guided her daily existence. Toshiko lived life to the fullest and on her own terms. She was as comfortable picking string beans in her vegetable garden and cooking in her kitchen, as she was turning porcelain closed forms on her Shimpo potters wheel in her basement studio. In fact, she often commented how there was really no difference between the three: growing vegetables, cooking and making pots. Those members of NCECA who knew her will have their own stories and memories to share about her life and genius. As for me, although I am deeply saddened by her death, I am able to celebrate her life and her beauty, and the exceptional memories I possess, lingers just beyond the cloud that her final passing brings for the moment.

Toshiko Takaezu's art has been featured in major one-person exhibitions, including at:
The Contemporary Museum of Hawaii, Honolulu
The Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA
Dickinson College, Carlyle, PA
Montclair Museum, Montclair, NJ
LongHouse Reserve Museum, East Hampton, NY
The American Crafts Museum of New York (Now, The Museum of Art and Designs)
The Museum of Art of The University at Albany, Albany, NY
The Hunterdon Museum, Clinton, NJ
Goshen College, Goshen, IN
Perimeter Gallery, Chicago, IL

The Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI
The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum, Biloxi, MI
The Charles Cowles Gallery, NY, NY
The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, NJ
The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Manatee Community College, Bradenton, FL
Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art, Greensboro, North Carolina
National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan
Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY

And her work is featured in the permanent collections of many great museums, including:

The Japanese American National Museum of Los Angeles, CA
The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
The Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, NY
The Milwaukee Museum of Art
The Johnson Wax Collection, Racine, WI
The Honolulu Academy of Art, Honolulu, HI
The Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY
Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI
Boston Fine Arts Museum, Boston, MA
The Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI
St. Paul Gallery, St. Paul, MN

Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH

“Isis (Sirius),” glazed stoneware by Toshiko Takaezu (1999-2000). Photographed by Michael Tropea

Toshiko Takaezu, United States, Untitled (Dark Blue, Brown), 2000, porcelain, 7.5 x 5 x 5”

Sculpture by artist William Kentridge

2011-03-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

Click on pages from Sculpture Magazine to enlarge and read.

Artist: Grayson Perry

2011-03-02T07:50:00.000-08:00

Sir Ken Robinson

2011-02-25T09:58:00.001-08:00

Sir Ken Robinson (born Liverpool, 4 March 1950) is an author, speaker and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, education and arts bodies. He was Director of The Arts in Schools Project (1985–89), Professor of Arts Education at the University of Warwick (1989–2001) and was knighted in 2003 for services to education.

http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/who

The Exhibition: The Parallax View

2011-02-19T08:45:00.000-08:00

Lehmann Maupin announces The Parallax View, an exhibition of significant works exploring observation as conflict, curated by Manual E. Gonzalez. On view 10 February – 19 March, 2011, the Chelsea exhibition features works by Teresita Fernández, Dan Flavin, Gego, Mary Heilmann, Eva Hesse, Robert Irwin, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Smithson, all acclaimed artists who confront traditional notions of space, light and the nature of observation.

Grounded in the idea of a parallax, defined as “the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer,” this exhibition brings together stylistically disparate artists linked by the tension and romance between rigorous geometry and expressive chaos. The Parallax View explores the idea of observation as conflict: conflict between mind and object; analysis and fleeting insight; continuity and fragmentation; object and artifact; inner and outer.

The minimalist works by Dan Flavin and Robert Irwin provide narratives about light and landscape. Agnes Martin and Mary Heilmann suggest both the vastness and intimacy of nature, yet another source of conflict, but free of nostalgia or sentimentality. Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris and Teresita Fernández define perception, the physical and temporal relationships that a viewer encounters in relation to an artwork, setting the stage for interpreting a parallax as a prism that reflects the many facets of observation as conflict. Eva Hesse and Gego take a playfully minimalist approach to liberate sculpture from its traditional restraints, and straddle the line between figuration and abstraction.

Taken as a whole, the exhibition is a complex spatial proposition on the relationship between seeing and experience, an abridged history within the shifting paradigms that ushered art towards the present century.

TERESITA FERNÁNDEZ Untitled Installation view at Lehmann Maupin, New York, 1997 wood, scrim, mirror, pencil 120 x 120 x 9 inches 304.8 x 304.8 x 22.9 cm LM5225

Artist: Nancy Grossman

2011-02-08T21:44:00.000-08:00

Road to Life

Artwork Details

Dimensions:

I. 17 7/8 x 25 in. (45.4 x 63.5 cm); S. 19 3/4 x 26 1/8 in. (50.2 x 66.4 cm)

Medium: Lithograph

Creation Date: 1975

Artist: John Currin

2011-02-08T21:37:00.000-08:00

Blond Angle

Dimensions: diam.: 16 in.

Medium: oil on canvas

Creation Date: 2001

On View

At Indianapolis Museum of Art

MOVING SENDAK’S WALL

2011-02-04T11:46:00.000-08:00

Maurice Sendak painted this mural in the New York apartment of his friends the Chertoffs. The family donated the mural (and plaster) to the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia; through April, the public can watch repairs in progress.

Maurice Sendak has almost never applied his signature toothy creatures to walls, but in 1961 he gave a mural to friends, Lionel and Roslyn Chertoff, on Central Park West in New York. In their apartment, he spent months filling a bedroom wall with costumed children leading birds and circus animals. He inscribed the names of the Chertoffs’ children, Larry and Nina, on a parasol wound around a lion’s tail.

Three years ago the family donated the mural to the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, which owns about 10,000 of Mr. Sendak’s works. The Chertoff painting, still attached to 1,000 pounds of Manhattan plaster, has been mounted on an aluminum-reinforced wall at the museum’s Sendak gallery.

Through April, the public can watch repairs in progress for two hours on Wednesdays (about 1 to 2 p.m. and 6 to 7 p.m.). Milner & Carr Conservation will patch cracks, remove patches of whitewash and fill in lost details. Mr. Sendak is scheduled to complete the work.

“We’re hoping there’s some tiny little thing that he’ll add a flourish to, maybe one little blade of missing grass,” said Catherine L. Myers, a senior conservator at Milner & Carr.

A version of this article appeared in print on February 4, 2011, on page C29 of the New York edition.

http://www.rosenbach.org/learn/objects/chertoff-mural

Beautiful Views of Planet Earth

2011-02-01T12:57:00.000-08:00

Loreena McKennitt - Night Ride Across the Caucasus

I found this at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJQoF-hamHg

MONUMENTAL

2011-01-29T12:07:00.000-08:00

Dec 3, 2010 - Feb 24, 2011

Chimta by Subodh Gupta

Chicago, Illinois: Monumental: A Show of Epic Proportions at Walsh Gallery

Monumental exhibits 15 contemporary Asian and Asian American artists whose works share--whether in painting, sculpture, installation or photography--a love of the grand. These artists pushed the boundaries of scale to create works of a monumental nature. Often embedded in these works were the ideas of historical commentary, whether of a personal narrative or global nature. These large-scale pieces were created by artists from China, India, Korea and Indonesia, including Yue Minjun, Subodh Gupta, Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, Rong Rong and inri, Zhang Dali, Chen Wenbo, Zhu Wei, Kim Joon, Han Seok Hyun, Ravinder Reddy, the Gao Brothers and Heri Dono. The show also includes works by Chicago artists Indira Johnson and Von Kommanivanh. The opening reception is Friday Dec. 3 from 5:00 - 8:00 pm. The exhibit runs until February 24, 2011.

Monumental is primarily a collection show of founder Julie Walsh, which means that the pieces in this exhibit not only talk about history, but are also historical themselves. These are early works by some of the biggest names in the industry that Ms. Walsh purchased before Chinese art and Indian art had been discovered in a global sense. Works in the exhibit fall into three primary categories: current events, personal narrative, and specific historical events.

Personal History

Subodh Gupta's large scale oval installation called Chimta is made up entirely of stainless steel tongs which were made in India. In this work Mr. Gupta helps expose some of the clichés of India as he deftly explores the question of just how "Indian" contemporary Indian art needs to be. He takes the most mundane object and converts it into an assemblage of massive proportions.

Referencing African and Egyptian sculpture, Ravinder Reddy's gold leaf covered six-foot fiberglass bust Tara is at once a portrait of a contemporary deity and a tribute to that which endures in art over time. Mr. Reddy feels that what endures is woman's strength of character. His sculptures are created from sketches of women that he sees in his hometown in Southern India.

Past History

The Gao Brothers' comical icon Miss Mao is a seven-foot silver painted statue of Mao Zedong as a woman, including both Mao's distinctive wart and full breasts.

Atul Dodiya's nine by six-foot shop shutter called E.T. is composed of multiple layers. On the outside of the shutter is a painting of a grand historical moment when Einstein met Rabindranath Tagore in India. The outside of the shutter represents the great ideals of how India could be. When the shutter is lifted it reveals a painting of a surreal landscape with a skeletal scribe on top of an airplane dropping either food packages or bombs on a desolate landscape with a few houses.

Monumental delivers an array of historically impressive works through scale or context. Works by the artists in Monumental have been seen in important biennials around the world as well as in exhibits in major international museums.

WALSH GALLERY
118 N. Peoria St 2nd Floor
Chicago, IL 60607

T-SA 10:30-5:30
p 312.829.3312
f 312.829.3316

info@walshgallery.com
www.walshgallery.com

Artist: Ursula von Rydingsvard: Sculpture 1991 - 2009

2011-01-22T20:50:00.000-08:00

Ursula von Rydingsvard, Droga, 2009.

SculptureCenter is pleased to premiere Ursula von Rydingsvard: Sculpture 1991 - 2009. Organized by SculptureCenter, this traveling exhibition will include a selection of the artist's most significant sculptures, including wall reliefs and monumental cedar works created from 1991 to 2009. The SculptureCenter presentation will also feature several works not traveling including a new cast resin piece to be installed in SculptureCenter's outdoor exhibition court. Ursula von Rydingsvard: Sculpture will be accompanied by a fully- illustrated monograph co- published by Prestel and authored by art historian Patricia Phillips. The exhibition will be on view January 24 - March 28, 2011. An opening reception will take place Sunday January 23rd 5-7 pm and is open to the public. The artist will be present.

Von Rydingsvard is best known for creating large-scale, often monumental sculpture from cedar beams, which she painstakingly cuts, assembles, glues, clamps, and laminates, finally rubbing powdered graphite into the work's textured, faceted surfaces. Her signature shapes are abstract, with references to things in the real world. Drawing on a range of sources, from the humble to the majestic, von Rydingsvard's work is recognized for its great psychological force and powerful physical presence. In wall sculptures such as Untitled (Spoon Shovel) (1991-1992) and Finger Spoon (2007), the artist lends a dignity to works resembling familiar household items; while the initially strange Maglownica (1995), a tall, bumpy cedar plank sheathed in cow intestines, turns out to have similar, personal associations. A maglownica is an object traditionally used by Polish farmwomen to soften sheets with a rubbing motion after washing. Von Rydingsvard's most enduring form is the bowl, which may appear as a shallow or towering form, and may alternately evoke nourishment, domesticity, the body, a simple enclosure, or a mountain, among other references. The exhibition includes the five undulating bowls that make up Krasawica II (1998-2001), Ukrainian for beautiful young woman, whose overall shape conveys a fluid sense of movement and vitality despite its substantial, weighty volume; as well as the large, low basin, ringed with bulbous, stuffed-intestinal forms, whose primal, physical gravity recalls the Ocean Floor (1996). The exhibition is organized by SculptureCenter and guest-curated by Helaine Posner.

After the New York presentation, the exhibition will travel to the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (May 16 - August 28,2011); Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (September 23, 2011 - March 25, 2012) and the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami (April 18 - August 4, 2012).

About the Artist

Ursula von Rydingsvard's first solo exhibition was presented in New York in 1975 and she has been exhibiting her work in museums and galleries internationally ever since. Her sculpture is included in the permanent collections of over thirty museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and Detroit Institute of Arts. Major permanent commissions of her work are view at the Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington; the Bloomberg Building, New York; and the Queens Family Courthouse, New York. Mad. Sq. Art: Ursula von Rydingsvard was presented at Madison Square Park in 2006.

Artist Franklin Carmichael - print

2011-01-19T14:28:00.001-08:00

NELLIE LAKE

By Franklin Carmichael

Artwork Description

Dimensions: 9.5 x 12.1cm (3 3/4 x 4 3/4 in).image

Medium: wood engraving

Signed

Edition number: 2 from an edition of 50

Artist: Mariele Neudecker's - proposal

2011-01-19T06:58:00.000-08:00

German artist Mariele Neudecker’s design, It’s Never Too Late and You Can’t Go Back, is a fictional mountainscape sculpture

It’s Never Too Late And You Can’t Go Back is elevated above the Plinth and represents a fictional mountainscape. It is ‘specific in its dramatically modelled detail’ and if viewed from above reveals the flipped and reversed shape of Britain. From below, the map is the right way around and more familiar. The juxtaposition of different views shifts the observer’s perception of the mountain from majestic and generic landscape to territorial space.

Historically mountains represent monumentality, conquest, glory, ownership. In turn, the sentiments frequently attached to landscapes have often served as reminders of our more fragile, human, moral and mortal positions in the grandest considerations of the sublime.

Artist biography

Born in 1965 in Düsseldorf, Germany, Mariele Neudecker lives and works in Bristol. Neudecker uses a broad range of media including sculpture, installation, film and photography. Her practice investigates the formation and historical dissemination of cultural constructs around the natural world, focusing particularly on landscape representations within the Northern European Romantic tradition and notions of the Sublime. Central to the work is the human interest and relationship to landscape and its images used metaphorically for human psychology.

Mariele Neudecker has shown widely internationally, notably in Biennales in Japan, Australia and Singapore, also solo shows in Ikon Gallery, Tate StIves and Tate Britain. This year Mariele Neudecker has presented a solo exhibition at Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin, won the Ludwig Gies Preis for her participation at Triennale Fellbach 2010 (Germany), made a new commission for Extraordinary Measures, Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens, Newcastle upon Tyne (UK) and has been invited to spend three month at the Headlands Centre for the Arts, San Francisco (USA). She is represented by gallery Barbara Thumm, Berlin.

http://www.marieleneudecker.co.uk/index.html

Elmgreen & Dragset and Katharina Fritsch chosen for Fourth Plinth commissions

2011-01-19T06:50:00.000-08:00

London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, has announced the winning artists of the next two commissions for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth.

Scheduled for unveiling in 2012, Elmgreen & Dragset’s Powerless Structures, Fig.101 portrays a boy, ridding his rocking horse, cast in bronze. In the context of the iconography of Trafalgar Square the boy is elevated to the status of a historical hero. The work is intended to celebrate the heroism of growing up, gently questioning the tradition for monuments predicated on military victory or defeat. Here, there is not yet a history to commemorate—only a future to hope for.

Katharina Fritsch’s Hahn / Cock will be installed on the Fourth Plinth in 2013, showcasing a giant cockerel in ultramarine blue. Surrounded by Trafalgar Square’s genteel Georgian architecture, its unnatural scale and bold color aims to render the situation unreal in an effort to bring a sense of hallucination and uncertainty to the context.

The selection was made by the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group chaired by Ekow Eshun. Ekow Eshun said: "Elmgreen and Dragset and Katherina Fritsch are distinguished artists with major international reputations. Their selection further underlines the importance and reputation of the Fourth Plinth as the most significant public art commission in Britain. Both have created imaginative and arresting artworks that fully respond to the uniqueness of their location and I can't wait to see their sculptures in Trafalgar Square in 2012 and 2013."

Trafalgar Square is a square in central London, England. With its position in the heart of London, it is a tourist attraction, and one of the most famous squares in the United Ki

ngdom and the world. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. Statues and sculptures are on display in the square, including a fourth plinth displaying changing pieces of contemporary art. The square is also used as a location for political demonstrations and community gatherings, such as the celebration of New Year's Eve in London.

Public art has always been surrounded by debate. This came to a head as three sculptures by British contemporary artists were temporarily placed on the empty fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square, which had remained unoccupied for 158 years.

Designed in 1832 by Charles Barry, the square was always intended to give "scope and encouragement to sculptural work of a high class" and to give "distinctive and artistic character to the square." This aspiration was again addressed with the commissioning of new pieces of sculpture to be placed on the plinth.

The project was the brainchild of Prue Leith, who in her role as Deputy Chairman of the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, began to seek out ideas about what should be done to enliven the fourth plinth and to put it to good use. She also looked for sponsorship for the fourth plinth project. The foundation's way forward was to fund the project in the manner of its own commissioning process - the provision of funds to realise the works for exhibition and which would ultimately be sold. The project took place from July 1999 and ran until May 2001.

The first sculpture to occupy the plinth was Mark Wallinger's Ecce Homo: Behold the Man, installed in July 1999. A life-size figure in white marble resin standing at one end of the giant plinth, it portrayed Christ at the moment he was handed over to the crowds by Pontius Pilate. Wallinger stated, "Trafalgar Square has a tradition of being a place for crowds and it seemed to me to be the perfect context for this statue". Amidst the proud military Victorian heroes, the clean-shaven figure, with hands bound behind him and eyes downcast, portrayed an air of intense vulnerability, deliberately dwarfed by his formidable central London surroundings.

The second sculpture to be placed on the plinth, beside Nelson atop his 172 foot column, was Bill Woodrow's Regardless of History, installed in March 2000. This is the largest and most complex bronze sculpture ever undertaken by Woodrow, a great idea for a big civic sculpture. It is now installed in the sculpture park in Goodwood and looking for a good home. Cast in 130 pieces and weighing eleven and a half tonnes, the epic Regardless of History continued to spur on the debate about what should permanently occupy the plinth.

The third piece for the plinth was Rachel Whiteread's Monument. The transparency of the inverted cast of the plinth resulted in, as Whiteread stated, it "sometimes being present, sometimes being ephemeral, depending on the quality of daylight and the weather."

The Fourth Plinth Programme is funded by the Mayor of London with support from Arts Council England and sees new artworks being selected for the vacant plinth in a rolling program of new commissions.

www.london.gov.uk/fourthplinth/

Welsh Photographer - David Wilson

2011-01-17T23:53:00.000-08:00

"My love of landscape photography began when I bought my first camera at the age of seventeen. I spent many carefree days riding around Pembrokeshire on my motorbike with my 35mm Canon and an ordnance survey map, learning to take landscape photographs while exploring the coast and countryside. Due to my habit of colliding with objects the motorbike is now history, but my passion for photography, particularly black and white landscape, is stronger than ever."

"Situated on the very western tip of Wales and surrounded on three sides by the sea, Pembrokeshire is an idyllic location to indulge in landscape photography."

http://www.davidwilsonphotography.co.uk/index.html

Artist: Dick Lehman - Teabowls

2011-01-17T19:12:00.000-08:00

http://www.dicklehman.com/index.html

Monet - Landscape

2011-01-15T11:25:00.000-08:00

Two images of the same painting - color is iffy.

Yoeme deer dance headdress

2011-01-05T04:23:00.000-08:00

Yoeme deer dance headdress

ca. 1910
Sonora, Mexico
Deer hide, glass eyes, antlers
31 x 25 x 33 cm
Collected by Edward H. Davis
11/2382

Brought to life with the music of deer songs, this headdress is worn by Yoeme Deer Dancers dancing to the beat of the songs. Shaking gourd rattles, the deer dancers also wear deer-hoof rattles around their waists, as well as cocoon rattles around their lower legs. Yoeme have always believed they exist in close communion with all the inhabitants of the Sonoran Desert and the Deer Dancers help them feel this connection. Contemporary Yoeme regard the Deer Dance and Deer Dance songs as the most essential expression of what it means to be Yoeme—that is, to be entrusted with the well-being of the earth, its animals and plants.

http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/infinityofnations/introduction.html

Artist: Ai WeiWei

2010-12-16T06:43:00.000-08:00

People power comes to the Turbine Hall: Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds

It took an army of 1,600 Chinese artisans to create Ai Weiwei's 100m handpainted porcelain 'seeds', which are scattered over the floor of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall

Day at the beach? A young girl sits down on Ai Weiwei's porcelain sunflower seeds in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

The floor is entirely covered with a deep layer of what appear to be grey pebbles. It is like a bleak Suffolk beach, and a toddler, getting into the spirit of it, has shed her shoes and is having a sit-down in her stockinged feet. Adults are not so comfortable: as if caught out by a freak snowstorm in the wrong shoes, several are picking a distinctly wobbly way over the crunchy, uneven surface, suddenly looking out of place in autumnal London clothes.

There is more to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's installation than meets the eye, however. Bend and pick up one of the "pebbles" and you can see that it resembles a sunflower seed encased in its striped husk. In fact, each one – and there are 100 million of them, covering an area of 1,000 square metres – is handmade from porcelain and has been individually handpainted.

Ai – a bearded, impassive, black-clad figure, who snapped the photographers surrounding him at today's press view almost as busily as they did him, and posted the results on Twitter – had the "seeds" made in the southern Chinese city of Jingdezhen.

"Historically, the town's only activity has been making porcelainware for over 1,000 years. The super-high-quality skill for generations has been making imperial porcelainware," he said. "In modern days, however, it has become very commercialised."

Harnessing traditional craft skills, each seed was moulded, fired, and painted with three or four individual brush strokes, often by women taking the objects home to work on them. One thousand six hundred people were involved in the process. "Even taxi drivers were talking about it," he said.

"I tried to explain to [the artisans] what we wanted them for, but they found it very difficult to understand," said Ai. "Everything they usually make is practical, and the painters are used to creating classically beautiful flowers using a high degree of skill."

He said that the workers had been paid a living wage – in fact slightly more than customary – to work on the project. "Now they are asking when we can start again," he said. "I shall have to think of a new project."

Sunflower seeds, he said, had a particular significance in recent Chinese culture and history. During the cultural revolution, Mao Zedong was often likened to the sun and the people to sunflowers, gazing adoringly at his face. But sunflowers were also a humble but valued source of food in straitened times, a snack to be consumed with friends.

What if the temptation to put one of these lovingly made objects in your pocket becomes too great? Smiling, he said: "They might also want to eat one, and that would be a safety issue for the museum." He added: "If I was in the audience I would definitely want to take a seed. But for the museum, it is a total work, and taking a seed would affect the work. Institutions have their own policies. But I know I would want to take a seed."

A spokeswoman for the museum confirmed that they would be "encouraging people not to" depart with a souvenir. After the installation at Tate Modern is closed the seeds, which weigh 150 tons, will be shipped back to Ai's studio in Beijing, where he will think about using them for another project.

Did he make any of the 100 million sunflower seeds himself? "I made three or four," he said. "But none of them was any good."

Tate Modern's sunflower seeds: the world in the palm of your hand

Courtesy of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the Turbine Hall is now carpeted with a million hand-painted seeds – an image of globalisation both politically powerful and hauntingly beautiful.

Quite a handful ... Ai Weiwei with his sunflower seeds in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA

When you first meet him, Ai Weiwei seems as solid and impassive as a pillar of granite. He leads the way into his home without a word, then sits silently at the head of a long wooden table. But on the wall of his elegant, open-plan home, in the outskirts of Beijing, hangs a single image: of a hand with its middle finger raised. Ai has plenty to say.

Indeed he has so much to say that the 53-year-old is not only China's most famous living artist, but also a constant irritant to its authorities. When Tate Modern announced recently that it had commissioned him to fill its Turbine Hall later this year, it was a welcome reminder of his work, which in recent times has become almost overshadowed by his social and political criticism.

But the voice itself was forged in his earliest childhood. "I experienced humanity before I should. When I was very young," he says. If that sounds grandiloquent, consider his history: Ai spent years of his childhood in a labour camp in the far north-west of China, on the edge of the Gobi desert. His father, Ai Qing, was an artist and one of China's most revered modern poets, but fell foul of the late 1950s anti-rightist campaign. Life was precarious, and his parents had little time to spare for their offspring. "It was like being a little boy in the centre of a storm. Just always scared or surprised by surroundings that you cannot make sense of. And you have no comparisons because you have no memory of what another life can be," he says.

But 12 years later, when his father fell ill, he moved back to Beijing. He did so with little to show for his time in the US, at least to the outside eye. "I hadn't become very rich or got status or become part of the American dream – I had no success. I hadn't got my school diploma [or] American citizenship – that's unique for the early Chinese students in the US; those are two things they all got. I was unmarried, didn't have a real job, couldn't drive. So my mother really thought I'd never been there. She was shy to even introduce me to her friends," he says jokingly.

Ai's father sensed his discomfort on returning and offered some advice: don't be courteous. Treat this country as your home. Do whatever you want. The artist is still grateful for those words, though one feels the Chinese government may be less so. Ai helped to design the "Bird's Nest" national stadium for the 2008 Olympics – then blasted the country's "disgusting" political conditions and the use of the games as propaganda. Since then he has championed a number of sensitive causes, notably internet freedom and justice for children who died when shoddy schools collapsed in the devastating Sichuan earthquake. Others have fallen foul of the government for far less, and supporters fear Ai's position and his father's reputation will only shield him for so long. Certainly, the authorities seem to regard him, increasingly, as a problem. His China-based blog has been closed down, his email account hacked into, and security officials have made inquiries at his bank. In Chengdu last year, police detained him and fellow activists to prevent them attending the trial of a campaigner investigating schoolchildren's deaths. In the furore, a policeman punched him in the head, leaving him with painful headaches; weeks later, while working in Germany, he underwent surgery after doctors spotted internal bleeding.

"Life is never guaranteed to be safe so we better use it when we are still in good condition," he says now. "I always think that incident shouldn't have happened that way. Other than that . . . I don't want the bad memories, bad incidents, to stop me or have an effect on me."

"The state is taking action against people who have peacefully demonstrated their ideas. They are writers – all they did is to express their minds through the internet. So the pattern is very clear. The state tries to maintain stability by crushing any thought of making change," Ai says. "It could happen to me, because I did the same thing and in many cases I went much further and deeper. But I always think the government can learn from their mistakes – they should learn and should understand; they should be just as intelligent as anyone else. I have to be wishful [optimistic] in that sense."

His father's experiences have left him, he says, with a sense of duty "to speak for the generation, or generations, who didn't have a chance to speak out". "And I also have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is OK, to speak out," he says.

And then, of course, there's his art. Ai's growing profile as a government critic has come swift on the heels of artistic acclaim for works such as his photographic series "Dropping a Han dynasty urn", which captures his destruction of an ancient vessel. But to Ai there is no meaningful distinction between his art and the rest of his life: "I'm not worried viewers will be distracted [by my activism] – I am worried they will not," he says. "I would never say I am just an artist or have some higher aesthetic values."

In recent years even his work for galleries has become overtly political, blurring the boundary between art and activism – at a recent show in Munich, his Remembering installation comprised 9,000 children's backpacks, in reference to the death toll of pupils in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Attached to the outside of the Haus der Kunst, they spelled out a grieving mother's words: "She lived happily for seven years in this world."

But he says his relationship with the country has been strengthened by his struggles with it. He makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sigh when asked if he fears the authorities might bar him from returning to China one day. "People have said, if you leave, you may never come back. Or they may not even let you leave. So this is always a cost you may have to pay," he says. "But I don't want to restrict myself: when it happens, it happens. I have to deal with it, but not to prepare for it, because it is a kind of stupidity. If you prepare for it too much, you become a part of it."

Following his recent October opening at the Tate Modern, on November 5, 2010, Ai WeiWei, Chinese artist and activist, was placed under house arrest by the Chinese police. Weiwei said this house arrest was planned to prevent him from attending a party to mark the demolition of his newly built Shanghai studio, an order from the Chinese government. We learned on Artdaily, that just as he was finishing construction on his new studio, he received a notice from the government informing him that he would have to knock it down. In good activist fashion, Weiwei planned a party to commemorate and draw attention to this event.

Video link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2010/mar/18/ai-weiwei-turbine-hall-tate

A book called Icebergs

2010-12-08T19:58:00.000-08:00

Icebergs, by Roma Gains, Illustrated by Bobri, Thomas Y. Crowell Company New York, 1964

Anonymous Chinese artist

2010-12-08T05:36:00.000-08:00

Anonymous Chinese artist, 'Peanut, Arachis hypogaea', late 18th or early 19th century. Museum no. E.1754-1924

Anonymous Chinese artist
'Peanut, Arachis hypogaea'
Late 18th or early 19th century
Watercolour
Museum no. E.1754-1924

As China opened up to foreign trade in the eighteenth century European botanists were compelled to record the plants they encountered for the first time. Rather than return home with dry and lifeless specimens, native artists were employed to produce drawings from living species, particularly around the ports of Macao and Canton.

Though Chinese artists could boast a long tradition of flower painting, their abstract style was very different from the precise botanical illustration undertaken in Europe. In order to satisfy their patrons' tastes, these native artists began to study European examples and to adopt the same conventions.

This study of a peanut plant shows the characteristically hybrid style that emerged. Attesting to its European influence, the drawing is arranged on a blank page and every detail, including the last nibbled leaf is recorded. Nevertheless, there are still Chinese traits such as the flattened perspective.

Artist: EH Shepard - Pooh's Wood Map

2010-12-08T05:03:00.001-08:00

Preparatory sketch-map for endpapers of Winnie the Pooh.

"This is a preparatory drawing for the sketch-map reproduced on the endpapers of Winnie-the-Pooh and therefore one of the most celebrated locations in children's literature. Although the geography was not revised, several captions were evidently changed. 'Eeyores Gloomy Place' was originally 'Eeyores Pasture Land' and the 'Floody Place' was originally captioned 'Floods Might Happen Here'. Shepard also poses the question 'What sort of House is Kangas?' at the top of the map. The caption at the foot originally appeared as 'Drawn by Me helped by Mr Shepard' and shows a process of revision to 'Drawn by Me and Mr Shepard helped'. It was printed as 'Drawn by Me and Mr Shepard helpd'."

Ingres's "Comtesse d’Haussonville" goes to California

2010-12-07T20:09:00.000-08:00

PASADENA, CA. - The Norton Simon Museum will present a special installation of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s stunning portrait of Comtesse d’Haussonville, 1845, on loan from The Frick Collection in New York. This portrait of the comtesse, a young woman known as Louise, Princess de Broglie, is the first loan from the Frick in an art exchange program between the venerable New York institution and the Norton Simon foundations. This captivating, large-scale work has never before traveled to California. Two related preparatory drawings from the Frick’s collections will accompany the work.

“The Frick Collection is one of the world’s most acclaimed art institutions and was especially admired and respected by Norton Simon,” says Walter Timoshuk, President of the Norton Simon Museum. “This exchange program not only brings some of the Frick’s marvelous works to the West Coast, but also honors Mr. Simon’s esteem for this exceptional institution.”

Located on Fifth Avenue, The Frick Collection is housed in the former mansion of industrialist Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) and is home to an internationally celebrated collection of Western fine and decorative arts, with works by Bellini, Fragonard, Gainsborough, Goya, Holbein, Ingres, Manet, Monet, Rembrandt, Renoir, Titian, Turner, Velazquez, Vermeer, Whistler, and others. “We are delighted more to form this special exchange with the Norton Simon Museum, whose superb works very rarely leave Pasadena,” says Anne L. Poulet, Director of The Frick Collection. “And what a pleasure it will be to view the Comtesse in a new setting—the Norton Simon’s beautiful and serene galleries.”

Comtesse d’Haussonville will be on view at the Norton Simon Museum from October 30, 2009, through January 25, 2010. Two preparatory drawings by Ingres will accompany the painting—one a direct study, executed around 1843 or 1844, which shows this same pose and his process in dealing with the folds of her elegant dress; the other a preparatory detail drawing for an 1839 commission for his monumental work, The Golden Age. All three works will hang alongside the Norton Simon’s portrait of Baron Joseph-Pierre Vialetés de Mortarieu, also by Ingres. A series of lectures and educational and family programs will be organized around the installation. A related exhibition, “Gaze: Portraiture after Ingres,” runs from October 30 through April 5, 2010.

Comtesse d’Haussonville
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780–1867) left behind a rich and varied body of work created during his long life. While many of his most known paintings are historical and religious depictions, his series of portraits, many of them of well-born, beautiful women, are among his most captivating. Ingres began his portrait of Louise d’Haussonville (1818–1882) in 1842, when he was 62 and the comtesse was 24. The picture shows the lovely young woman standing before a hearth in a well appointed room, a mirror on the wall reflecting the back of her head and neck. She wears an elegant, Delft-blue silk dress, its folds and details resplendent, a few pieces of gold jewelry, and an ornate red ribbon and tortoiseshell comb in her hair. One arm rests across her waist, the other is bent upward, and her hand is tucked under her chin. The comtesse looks directly ahead, and her slight smile and open expression invite the viewer into this lovely scene.

“Her contemplative pose, with hand to chin, is a motif Ingres revisits time and time again in portraits, history paintings, and surviving sketches,” says Carol Togneri, Chief Curator at the Norton Simon Museum. “The opportunity to have this beautiful portrait, as well as two working drawings that show his interest in this important detail, allows us to consider Ingres’s relationship and homage to antique art.”

http://www.nortonsimon.org/
http://www.frick.org/

Artist: Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington and the Lincoln Sculptures

2010-12-07T19:35:00.000-08:00

When we lived in Bethel this is how the Lincoln sculpture looked in the downtown I always loved looking at it. Then when we moved to the mid-west and stumbled upon it again in Illinois I now think of it as something I was supposed to see and remember.

Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (March 10, 1876 – October 4 ,1973) was a prolific and innovative American sculptor. She was a master of naturalistic animal sculpture. Particularly noted for her equestrian statues she was active over a period of 70 years.

Huntington is recognized as one of America's finest animaliers, whose naturalistic works helped to bridge the gap between the traditional styles of the 1800s and the abstract styles of the mid-twentieth century. Her prominence also enabled other female artists to succeed. Her innovations in technique and display, as exhibited through her aluminum statues in Brookgreen Gardens, guarantee her place in the annals of art history.

During the 1940s and 1950s, she was increasingly distressed by modern art and what she considered a tasteless machine age. However, despite widespread public interest in abstract sculpture, Mrs. Huntington continued to win recognition and awards. She did her last equestrian statue when she was 91.

Huntington, along with her husband, Archer Milton Huntington, helped found nearly 20 museums and wildlife preserves as well as America's first sculpture garden, Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina.

In anticipation of the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth in 2009, the 2006 Springfield City Ornament depicts Abraham Lincoln:On the Prairie, the sculpture at the entrance to New Salem where he lived as a young man. The sculpture by Anna Hyatt Huntington portrays young Abe on horseback, reading a law book. Springfield artist Stan Squires interpreted the statue for the ornament design, silhouetting Lincoln and his horse between wisps of prairie grass and a split-rail fence.

Artist: Hubert Robert and some of his Bridges

2010-11-27T07:56:00.000-08:00

Hubert Robert, French artist, born in Paris. (May 22, 1733 – April 15, 1808)

Hubert Robert spent eleven years in Rome; after the young artist's official residence at the French Academy in Rome ran out, he supported himself by works he produced for visiting connoisseurs like the abbé de Saint-Non, who took Robert to Naples in April 1760 to visit the ruins of Pompeii. The marquis de Marigny, director of the Bâtiments du Roi kept abreast of his development in correspondence with Natoire, director of the French Academy, who urged the pensionnaires to sketch out-of-doors, from nature: Robert needed no urging; drawings from his sketchbooks document his travels: Villa d'Este, Caprarola. Robert spent his time in the company of young artists in the circle of Piranesi, whose capricci of romantically overgrown ruins influenced him so greatly that he gained the nickname Robert des ruines.The albums of sketches and drawings he assembled in Rome supplied him with motifs that he worked into paintings throughout his career.

His success on his return to Paris in 1765 was rapid: the following year he was received by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, with a Roman capriccio, The Port of Rome, ornamented with different Monuments of Architecture, Ancient and Modern. During the Revolution, he was arrested in October 1793. He survived his detentions at Sainte-Pélagie and Saint-Lazare, by painting vignettes of prison life on plates, before he was freed at the fall of Robespierre.Robert narrowly escaped the guillotine when through error another prisoner died in his place. Subsequently he was placed on the committee of five in charge of the new national museum at the Palais du Louvre.

Le Pont Sur Le Torrent, painted in the mid-1780s by Hubert Robert, measures over 20 feet wide by 13 feet high, and carries an estimate of $2 million - $3 million. Originally commissioned by the Duc de Luynes for the dining room of his mansion in Paris, in 1925 it was acquired at auction by William Randolph Hearst and once decorated the beachfront castle that the newspaper baron purchased in late 1927 in Sands Point, Long Island as a retreat for his wife Millicent. The awe-inspiring artwork has not been seen in public in more than 50 years.

Artist: Hubert Robert Title: The Bridge Confiscated Collection: Sel 169 (previously Sel 156) (Seligmann, Paris)

This work was seized by the Nazis from Edouard Alphonse James de Rothschild. In 1940, the Baron and his wife escaped to Lisbon, Portugal right after the Nazi occupation of France. From there they were able to continue on their way to New York City, New York. It is there that they waited until the end of World War II to return to their homeland of Austria. But before his escape to the United States, James and his wife did their best to hide their massive art collection worth millions from the Nazi's. He hid most of his collection somewhere on the Haras de Meautry farm and at his Château de Reux estate. But in 1940, the Nazi's caught up with the Rothschild's treasure, raiding and looting everything in sight.

In this image Hubert Robert draws a rare view of Paris and depicts its most iconic building, the cathedral of Notre Dame. It is shown from the unusual angle beneath the Pont au double also known as the Pont de l'Hôtel Dieu (replaced in 1883 with the current bridge). The cathedral is seen from the east with its two Gothic towers and flying buttresses. The imposing monumentality of the cathedral is tempered by the bridge which takes up nearly half the sheet. The main protagonists, the three fishermen in the lower left corner, while diminutive in comparison to the architecture do not fail to capture the viewer's eye either.

Strangely, and perhaps tellingly, Robert chose to emphasize the bridge rather than the Gothic church. Bridges, real or imagined were a frequent motif in Robert's oeuvre. Two paintings by him depict the transformation of two bridges in Paris: The demolition of houses on the Pont Notre-Dame in 1786 (Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle), and The demolition of houses on the Pont-au-Change in 1788 (Paris, Musée Carnavalet).

For a full discussion of bridges in Robert's work see Hubert Robert 1733-1808 und die Brücken von Paris (exhib. cat., Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, 1991).

Chagall Windows are Back at the Art Institute in Chicago

2010-11-27T05:38:00.000-08:00

After five years out of sight, one of the Art Institute of Chicago's most popular works is back.

Belarusian artist Marc Chagall's "America Windows," dismantled in 2005 for safe keeping during the lengthy, vibration-heavy construction of the Modern Wing, reopens to the public.
Remember Ferris, Cameron, and Sloane's escapade into Chicago circa-1986?

It's hard to forget Ferris Bueller’s Day Off , and now a set of stained glass windows that figured into that trio's Art Institute trip are back in Chicago's conscience.
Chagall gave the deep cobalt blue windows to the Art Institute in 1977 to commemorate the American Bicentennial in honor of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley who died in 1976. The work is a nod to Chicago's support of public art in the '60s and '70s and features six panels depicting freedom of expression. Chagall came to stained glass just around his 70th birthday and continued until he reached 85 years when he had become truly excited with this new experience and his genuine love for the windows is most touchingly related by himself in numerous publications.

"I think we naturally respond to color," Douglas W. Druick, the museum's Searle Curator and chair of the Department of Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture said. "Not only does one read the stained glass as a two-dimensional experience in windows, but one is brought into the art by the light spilling through the glass and bringing color into the room in which you're experiencing it."
But even that experience can be marred over time. After nearly 30 years on view overlooking McKinlock Court, the glass windows, subject to slight condensation, had attracted atmospheric deposits of oil and calcium carbonate, which appeared as a sheer white film dulling their filtered, colored light. Just as a dirty windshield acts as a screen from light, Druick said, the brilliance of colors in Chagall's windows was being muted.
Seizing on the opportunity provided by the 36-paneled windows' removal during the lengthy construction, the museum's conservation staff investigated various methods of cleaning, and, beginning about two years ago, the restorative work began. Associate Conservator Emily Heye was at the helm.
"Imagine large Q-tips and lots of time spent carefully rinsing after the fact," Heye explained via telephone of one of the steps of the cleaning process. Simultaneous to Heye's immaculate restorative work, a new exhibition space was designed and constructed for the windows in the east end of the museum's Arthur Rubloff building. Now reinstalled and framed tightly in the way that Chagall had intended, which Druick says "focuses on the windows in a particular way," the windows are ready for the museum's busy holiday season.

Click on Image to View Larger

From Breaking News Chicago - October 28, 2010 9:52 AM
and
Source:http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/Art-Institute-Welcomes-Back-Famous-Windows-106072508.html#ixzz16Unopehp

The Public Warhol in a Public Square

2010-11-25T20:20:00.001-08:00

Although winter hasn’t even started, there is already a lineup of public art projects scheduled for New York this spring. The Public Art Fund will be installing three sculpture exhibitions: at Union Square, City Hall Park and Doris C. Freedman Plaza, at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street.

“These aren’t site-specific installations; they are site-responsive,” said Nicholas Baume, director and chief curator of the Public Art Fund, the nonprofit organization that presents art around the city. “They are all linked because they use New York City as a context.”

Perhaps the most surprising will be a 10-foot-tall bronze sculpture of Andy Warhol in Union Square (March 30 to Oct. 2). This will be only the second time the Public Art Fund has installed art there: the last project was “Woman’s Work” in 1993, the artist Rhonda Roland Shearer’s eight bronze sculptures of women scrubbing toilets, vacuuming and shopping for groceries while clutching squirming children to their bosoms.

But the New York artist Rob Pruitt chose this bustling area for the Warhol sculpture, called “The Andy Monument.” He had a particular corner in mind, at 17th Street and Broadway, just outside the building that once housed Warhol’s Factory. The sculpture depicts Warhol as he looked in the 1970s, in his signature fright wig, blue jeans and a tweed jacket. He is posed with a camera around his neck, carrying a shopping bag full of issues of Interview magazine, the publication he helped found.

“It’s conceived as a classical monument although it’s very contemporary,” Mr. Baume said. “It’s a real public Andy from the period where he would stand in Union Square giving out the magazines.”

By contrast, the London-based sculptor Eva Rothschild has claimed the plaza at the entrance to Central Park for a delicate work that she said would take “the form of a multidirectional arch.” The piece, which will be on view March 1 to Aug. 28, will rise nearly 20 feet and spill over the center of the plaza. Fashioned from red, green and black steel tubing four inches in diameter, it will echo the branches of trees in the park and be, as Ms. Rothschild put it, “another gateway between two different worlds of urban experience.”

Back downtown, in City Hall Park, more than 20 sculptures by Sol LeWitt will be installed from May 25 through Dec. 2. LeWitt, who died in 2007, was known for his Minimalist geometric work, and Mr. Baume has assembled large-scale pieces dating from the 1960s through 2006, including many that will be seen in this country for the first time. They will come from private collections and museums both here and abroad.

“There hasn’t been a career overview of his structures,” Mr. Baume said.

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: November 25, 2010 - New York Times

Gauguin at the Tate Modern 30 September 2010 – 16 January 2011

2010-11-21T13:33:00.000-08:00

Gauguin is one of the world's most famous and best-loved artists from the early 20^th century. For the first time in the UK in over 50 years, Tate Modern presents an exhibition dedicated to this master French Post-Impressionist, featuring paintings and drawings from around the world. His sumptuous, colourful images of women in Tahiti and beautiful landscape images of Brittany in France are some of the most popular images in Modern art.

Gauguin was the ultimate global traveller, sailing the South Seas, and living in Peru, Martinique, and Paris among other places. This exhibition explores the role of the myths around the man – Gauguin as storyteller, painting himself as a Christ-like figure or even a demon in his own paintings, religious and mythical symbols in his work, and the manipulation of his own artistic identity. It features many of his iconic paintings, including those showing daily village life from the artist's colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany, nude bathers and haystacks in the Breton landscape, and decorative works such as the carved wooden door panels around Gauguin's hut in the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia.

Gauguin sought to escape European civilisation in the South Seas. Inspired by Tahiti's tropical flora, fauna and island life, he immersed himself in its fast-disappearing local culture to invest his art with deeper meaning, ritual and myth.

Video - http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/624873206001

Exhibition Schedule:

Tate Modern, London
September 30, 2010 - January 16, 2011

National Gallery of Art, Washington
February 27 - June 5, 2011

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9264.html

Art Collector Steve Martin

2010-11-21T12:02:00.000-08:00

Gray Foy - Dimensions 1942
Museum of Modern ArtFractional and promised gift of Steve Martin

Steve Martin’s Sketch of the Art World

By JULIE BOSMAN

Published: November 17, 2010 New York Times

Walking down Madison Avenue on a sunny afternoon last week Steve Martin had the look of a movie star in thin disguise, wearing tinted glasses and a charcoal fedora that covered his familiar white head of hair.

Enlarge This Image

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Steve Martin’s new novel, “An Object of Beauty,” set in the Manhattan art scene, draws from long personal observation.

Enlarge This Image

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Steve Martin, right, with William Acquavella, the owner of Acquavella Galleries in Manhattan.

But once inside the Gagosian Gallery, one of the most high-powered galleries in New York, he peeled off his coat, revealing a dark suit, burgundy tie and perfectly polished black shoes that made him look more like one of the art dealers he describes in his new novel.

Mr. Martin was there to discuss the book, “An Object of Beauty,” a tale set in the Manhattan art world that draws from decades of personal observation. He is a longtime private collector. His friends include mega dealers like Larry Gagosian and William Acquavella, whose galleries — separated by a few blocks in an art-rich pocket of the Upper East Side — make regular appearances in the novel.

But Mr. Martin insisted repeatedly that he is far from an authority on the subject, and he often seemed more comfortable talking about art books than artworks.

“I’m not an expert,” he said, in his trademark dry sincerity. “Trust me, they don’t need me.”

At the Gagosian, Mr. Martin bypassed a room full of John Currin paintings in luscious shades of red, cream and gold, heading first for a long, narrow hallway where hundreds of books and catalogs were on display.

“Someone said to me, these libraries aren’t important anymore, because you can get it all online,” he said, gazing at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. “But you can’t. If you Google an artist and Google the images, you get no information — you don’t get where the painting is, you don’t get the medium, you don’t get the sizes, you don’t get the provenance. So these libraries are really important.”

Mr. Martin, 65, has distanced himself from his days as a wacky stand-up comedian but remains a comic actor who is also a regularly touring banjo player, children’s book author, essayist and novelist. Next year he will appear in a film about competitive bird-watching, “The Big Year,” and release a banjo record, “Rare Bird Alert.”

In person he is quiet, serious and polite, holding open doors and pressing elevator buttons — not the gangly goofball of his longtime public persona. And at times he is a little self-conscious. Rounding the corner of Madison Avenue and 79th Street, he noticed a photographer and grimaced. “I hate that my picture’s being taken in my fat coat,” he said, tugging at the hem of his boxy gray Zegna jacket.

Mr. Martin first became engrossed in art while in college, learning the basics from a close artist friend and a dealer with a large library. Traveling around the country doing his comedy show, he stopped in museums, usually in college towns, picking up books along the way.

“I have a theory that some people are born to it, and some people acquire it,” he said. “And I acquired it.”

The first significant piece he collected was a print by Ed Ruscha that he got rid of decades ago. “It’s a long story,” he said. “I sold it when I angrily left L.A.” (It is possible he needed to lose the print to forget Los Angeles, considering how closely Mr. Ruscha’s work mirrors the city.)

His current collection defies characterization, he said, allowing only that he had a mix of 19th- and 20th-century American art and “a French impressionist picture.” Not long ago he bought a painting by William Michael Harnett, a 19th-century still-life painter.

“It’s absolutely great to live with,” Mr. Martin said. “It’s better than television. There’s not a day I don’t look at or spend some amount of time with an artwork.”

Art makes an appearance in “Shopgirl,” his novella from 2000, and like “Shopgirl,” the new novel places a young woman, Lacey Yeager, at its center.

Two years ago he began writing “An Object of Beauty,” using books from his own collection — so large that he had to divide it between his homes in New York and Los Angeles — for reference. He particularly looked to his catalogs from Sotheby’s and Christie’s and at least three books on Maxfield Parrish, a 20th-century American painter who figures prominently in the novel.

The book is sprinkled with references to his experiences in New York. One character, a high-flying millionaire art collector named Patrice Claire, stays in the Carlyle Hotel whenever he is visiting from Paris. Mr. Martin used to keep an apartment there — a small one-bedroom, he said. Mr. Martin likes to ride his bicycle down the West Side bike path; so does Lacey Yeager, the fetching, ambitious art dealer from the book.

Real names are scattered throughout, largely to avoid having readers guess which fictional character is a stand-in for a real person.

Part of the reason to write about art, he said, was the challenge of capturing a world that is still a little foreign to him. This comes from a man who owned an Edward Hopper painting, “Hotel Window,” that he sold at Sotheby’s in 2006 for $26.8 million.

“The milieu of the book is the art world,” he said. “And the reason I chose the art world is I knew enough about it, but I don’t know everything about it. And I like that. I could have picked the milieu to be show business, but I feel like I know too much about that.”

Mr. Martin said he did not submit a manuscript to his publisher until it was complete, so that he would not be subject to deadlines or suggestions or any other kind of pressure.

He did receive a little pushback from Sotheby’s, which plays a small but slightly controversial role in the book, when one of the characters, a Sotheby’s employee, attempts a bidding scheme there. The people at the auction house were not pleased.

“They were a little nervous that a fraud takes place on the premises, but I convinced them that they come out to be heroes,” he said. (The fictional employee is promptly fired.)

He will soon find out how the art world feels about the book, which will be released Tuesday. Mr. Acquavella said he had just started to read it; Mr. Gagosian is giving him a book party.

The manuscript has been vetted by a couple of people who work for auction houses, and Mr. Martin made some small changes based on their suggestions.

He said he wasn’t concerned about whether the book is ever turned into a movie, as “Shopgirl” was. “My agent said, ‘We’ve got to send this out,’ and I said, ‘I frankly don’t care, because I’m not going to have anything to do with it,’ ” he said. “Although,” he added, “I’d be a good Barton Talley,” referring to one of the uptown art dealers in the novel.

“I gave it to my wife,” he said, finally breaking into a smile. “Her job is to say, ‘Fantastic!’ ”

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/on-colbert-report-steve-martin-interview-is-no-paint-by-numbers-affair/

Collecting Prints - Things to Know

2010-11-21T10:38:00.000-08:00

any collectors ask if there is an easy rule of thumb that will enable them to buy a print with confidence. alas, no simple rule exists. While patterns are evident and generalizations may be made, one must recognize that there are always exceptions. As with any discipline, the best thing one can do is to examine and handle materials, study, ask questions, and seek advice from experts. While volumes have been written on the subject of prints, here are some basic guidelines that should be helpful.

What is an original print, a restrike, a reproduction?



	Fig. 1: The Waterfall of Niagra, by Robert Hancock, after a drawing by Louis Hennepin, London, 1794. Line engraving with hand coloring. 91/4 x 151/4 inches. Courtesy, The Philadelphia Print Shop.

Original prints: An original print is made at the initial printing during the first run. There can be just one or hundreds of prints made at this point. To properly assess whether a print is an original, a collector must know some biographical information about the creator, and how, when, and with what materials a print was made. This history is important because people, methods, materials, and design are products of a specific time, and all the factors should align.

Restrikes: Restrikes use the same plates as the original, but are second-generation prints made after the first run. The span between an original and a restrike can range anywhere from a month’s time to several centuries. While usually less desirable than originals, restrikes are sometimes the only prints that are available, or for that matter, affordable.

Reproductions: There are many types of reproductions. Perhaps the most common is created when copies are made by taking photographs of an original print. Another technique is to prepare an entirely new plate using the original graphic process. case study: To illustrate the above distinctions, let us consider prints associated with Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669). A copper-plated print made during Rembrandt’s lifetime would beconsidered an original; such a print would be the most desirable and valuable. Some of Rembrandt’s plates still exist today. Restrike printings using these plates can be found dating from four centuries, with the most recent having the least value. A photographic reproduction is the type one might find at a museum shop.



Fig. 2: “Thrown Out on Second,” from Harper’s Weekly. New York, 10 September 1887. Wood engraving. 13 7/8 x 20 3/8 inches. Courtesy, The Philadelphia Print Shop.

Identifying the type of print

There are three categories of antique original prints: intaglio, relief, and planographic. They are defined by the plate or block from which the image is printed. The intaglio and relief processes have been available since the Renaissance and are still in use today.

Intaglio: An intaglio print is created by cutting into a metal plate so that the ink flows into the grooves. When dampened paper contacts the ink, a line adheres to the paper surface. Ink stands on top of the paper in the form of a dark line or dot; sometimes a raised surface can be perceived by a gentle touch (with clean hands of course).

As a result of the pressure from the plate and paper being pressed together during the printing process, a border or plate mark is usually detectable. Intaglio prints include aquatints, engravings, line engravings, etchings, drypoint, mezzotints, stipple prints, and other variations on the technique [Fig. 1].

Relief: A relief print is created when the surface of a printing block or matrix is cut away so that only the desired image remains raised. Pressure during printing is light in comparison to the intaglio process so as not to push the ink off the image and cause a blurred image. Prints from such blocks are woodcuts, wood engravings, or block prints [Fig. 2].

Planographic: This technique was invented at the beginning of the nineteenth century. As the science of chemistry came of age, printmakers learned how to apply solids and liquids to a flat surface so that applied ink would be attracted or rejected. This process is called lithography. A slight impression can sometimes be seen from the printing process. Terms such as stone lithograph or chromolithograph are used to define antique prints made with this process [Fig. 3].



	Fig. 3: “Great White Heron,” from The Birds of America. New York: J. Bien, 1860. Chromolithograph with touches of hand-coloring after John James Audubon. Elephant folio size. Courtesy, The Philadelphia Print Shop.

A final word

Armed with some of the basic definitions of what comprises a print, regarding the various versions and techniques, a general sense of art history is also useful in the process of evaluation, for the subject matter of prints encompasses categoriesas diverse as ancient architecture to outsider art. Most people know more than they realize, because in this day and age we are surrounded by decorative and fine art inspired by design sources from the past. Familiarity with what is accurate and appropriate for a period is helpful in the process of identification. When uncertain, consult a specialist.

Suggested Reading
Gascoigne, Bamber. How to Identify Prints. Thames and Hudson: London, 1986.

Lane, Christopher W. et al. What is a Print? A Discussion and Glossary of Print Processes and Terms. Philadelphia Print Shop: Philadelphia, 1994.

Zigrosser, Carl, and Christa M. Gaehde. A Guide to the Collecting and Care of Original Prints. Crown: New York, 1965.

Donald H. Cresswell, Ph.D., is proprietor of the Philadelphia Print Shop, Ltd., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Cresswell has published widely, teaches and lectures, serves on the committees of distinguished library societies, and is an appraiser for the Antiques Road Show on PBS.

Know Your Antiques is a regular feature that offers insight into the world of decorative and fine arts.

Celebration and Feasting: Pieter Bruegel, the Elder Pieter van der Heyden

2010-11-21T07:36:00.000-08:00

The Festival of Fools, after 1570,Pieter Bruegel, the Elder Pieter van der Heyden Sheet: 32.5 x 43.7 cm (12 13/16 x 17 3/16 in.) Engraving, Classification: Prints Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Fat Kitchen,1563 Pieter Bruegel, the Elder Pieter van der Heyden Hieronymus Cock Platemark: 22.3 x 29.2 cm (8 3/4 x 11 1/2 in.) Sheet: 22.8 x 30 cm (9 x 11 13/16 in.), Engraving, Classification: Prints, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Pieter Bruegel made only one autograph print; yet, printmaking was pivotal in his career, and he remains one of the central figures in the history of printmaking. Equally ironic is the scant knowledge we have of the life of this towering figure in Northern European art: the date and place of his birth, the nature of his artistic training, and his religious and political beliefs all remain unknown. Nonetheless, his reputation is secured by highly original paintings, drawings, and prints treating subjects ranging across landscape, allegory, biblical history, and peasant life--often conflating such genres. One of Bruegel's most raucous designs, "The Festival of Fools" combines allegory with images of rural life, casting fools in the roles of both peasants and aristocrats at play. They dance and bowl, fight and make music. They assume the parts of pilgrims, acrobats, and peddlers. Despite their raucous behavior, there are neither kegs of ale nor vats of wine: their foolishness comes from within. A long inscription accompanying the image includes telling passages, "…Numbskulls are found in all nations, / Even if they do not wear a fool's cap on their heads….Yet there are numbskulls who behave themselves wisely, / And understand the true sense of numbskulling / Because they [who] have found folly in themselves / Shall best hit the pin with their numbskulls." These are echoes Erasmus's celebrated satire "Praise of Folly" (1509) which taught the importance of recognizing and embracing human foolishness in order to overcome one's own failings. The lack of a dominant focal point in Bruegel's image may serve to underscore the universality of foolishness. Bruegel's activity as a print designer began in 1554 and lasted the rest of his life. He worked primarily with Antwerp publisher Hieronymus Cock, the most important purveyor of printed images in Northern Europe. Relying on a stable of skillful engravers, including Pieter van der Heyden, Cock and Bruegel produced 64 engravings of consistently high quality. After Bruegel's death in 1569 and Cock's in 1570, the latter's widow continued to publish Bruegel's designs under the imprint "Aux Quatre Vents" (To the Four Winds), a proclamation of her ability send visual message to all corners of the world. "The Festival of Fools" emerged from this last phase. It appears that the widow Cock sought to capitalize on a large drawing left behind by Bruegel. "The Festival of Fools" stands out among Bruegel's prints in that extensive changes were made to the image during the process of engraving: additional shading, additional plants, and elaborate decoration of the cupola of the theater-like structure. The present proof impression precedes these many changes and is one of only two known to survive from this early printing. The subsequent adjustments to the image raise the possibility that Van der Heyden was contending with problems posed by a drawing left incomplete at Bruegel's death.

Artist: Pam Ayres - Luthy Gardens Installation - Peoria, IL

2010-11-14T19:34:00.000-08:00

Artist: Pam Ayres - Installations at Guandu Nature Reserve Taiwan

2010-11-14T14:34:00.000-08:00

http://conservation.forest.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=22275&ctNode=725&mp=11

Artist Portfolio - Pamela Ayres

2010-11-14T13:18:00.000-08:00

Pam Ayres' Students' Works

2010-11-14T12:54:00.000-08:00

Artist: Pam Ayres - Practice Room - Grass Ball Installation

2010-11-14T07:17:00.000-08:00

Practice Room, April 2007 - June 2007
Interlochen center for the Arts, Interlochen, MI

I did this installation with the help of Interlochen Art Academy Visual Art Students for the Earth day celebrations at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in the spring of 2007.
The other artists were ceramic installation artist Jennifer Teter and ceramic and performance artist Hoon Lee.

Artist: Pam Ayres - Collaboration Work with Artist Jen Teter

2010-11-13T23:21:00.000-08:00

Artist: Pam Ayres - Deer Trail - Installation

2010-11-13T23:15:00.000-08:00

Artist: Pam Ayres - Hasting College Hastings, NE

2010-11-13T22:45:00.000-08:00

Artist: Pam Ayres - The Pink Rooms at the Prairie Center, Peoria, IL

2010-11-13T22:29:00.000-08:00

Artist: Pam Ayres -Passing - the Black Shirt Installation

2010-11-13T22:14:00.000-08:00

Artist: Pam Ayres - Installation at Michigan Legacy Art Park 2010

2010-11-11T22:06:00.000-08:00

The Water Brought the Trees, July 2010 - July 2011

Michigan Legacy Art Park, Thompsonville, MI

A site specific project for Michigan Legacy Art Park in Thompsonville, Michigan. The project involves using naturally felled branches and broken young trees that have been cleared and discarded. I am be shaving off areas of the old bark and exposing the smooth wood underneath. The installation will be shaped into boat like sculpture with branches protruding through the structure so that it hovers above the ground at about eye level. I am using simple building materials and methods to put the work together such and latching with wire and then covering the heavy wire with natural fibered rope.

http://www.michlegacyartpark.org/news_detail.asp?ID=28

Artist: Pam Ayres - Natural Competence - Rock Island, IL

2010-11-11T18:54:00.000-08:00

So you want to be an artist... By Ilana Stanger, Guest Writer

2010-11-09T07:28:00.001-08:00

Over the past ten years I have been asked about Graduate school - here is a pretty good article for you to check out.

Here are few things to consider when choosing an MFA program:

1. Consider how many years you want the program to be.

MFA programs usually take between one to three years, depending on the resources and the philosophy of the school. Danielle Taylor, who is in her last year at the University of Iowa's painting program, was drawn to Iowa's three-year MFA. "I wanted to do a three-year program because I worked at Penn's [the University of Pennsylvania] Graduate School of Fine Arts and saw what the grad students went though," she says. "The first year they're just realizing what it is to be in grad school — to work independently. The second year they would get into a groove and then have to graduate in the middle of all this momentum. I've had a third year to prepare to enter the job market. I can still go to my studio every day, but I have a lighter class load and a year to make the transformation. So professionally I think it's been really good." Abigail Cohen, who studied photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design, had the opposite take: "Two years was a great amount of time. It was perfect. I didn't want to be in school forever, I just wanted to get skills. Also, I was leaving a relationship behind, so I would've found it difficult to go to a three-year program. But two years were manageable." Whenever you embark on a new phase of life you have to consider both your personal and professional goals. Think about both in terms of the amount of time you'll spend in an MFA program.

2. Check out the facilities.

You should be given your own studio or a shared darkroom, as well as whatever equipment your discipline requires. One of the reasons Danielle chose Iowa was the private studios it offered its painting students. The studio has been crucial to her art; "a space where you can close the door and make a mess encourages risks because you're less afraid to fail." Abigail also found access to new equipment one of the most important benefits of the MFA program: "the equipment was amazing: computers and excellent labs. The types of things that I could use when I was in school were great."

Find out, before you apply, what sort of facilities and equipment you'll have access to as an art student.

3. Check out the community.

How competitive is it? How diverse? Although Danielle praised the general resources offered by her MFA program, her fellow students and faculty disappointed her. "There is a community, but I'm not a part of it. It's incredibly competitive. Everyone is fighting for scholarships, reputation, shows, attention. Social politics can be very difficult. There is a clique of students who really relate to faculty work, and they get much more supportive critiques. There are people who rip down posters that call for shows and hide them in their studio so no one else can enter." Abigail also noticed competition in her program, but found that in the end the community was more supportive than competitive. "When you're working with a group of people who are out there trying to get the same opportunities as you are then there's definite competition, but at the same time you have to rely on each other for support. It's such an intense period, when you're working on creating art, and no one else is going to really understand where your brain's at."

Frances Hahn, a second year Environmental Design major at the Ontario School of Art and Design, has found the community to be both the best, and the worst, part of her program. Says Fran, "25 people are all doing the same assignments and classes, so a real dialogue builds from critiques and assignments that continues outside the classroom. And the way you learn is mostly through conversations with your peers." But, on the other hand, "the community can be stifling, and there's the threat of all our work looking the same."

Once you're admitted to a program, request the names and numbers of a few students in different phases of the program. Call them and ask about the social atmosphere.

4. Think geography.

Danielle purposely picked a safe city, " I wanted to be able to work in my studio late at night and walk home. There's no distractions here [Iowa City], there's nothing to do except work." But there's also advantages to being in a more vibrant city. Fran appreciates that OCAD is "one of the centers of what's going on in the art community of the city [Toronto]. We always hear about openings and exhibits." Abigail chose SCAD, in part, because "the South was a different place-something I could explore using my camera." Danielle adds that it's best not to go to school with anyone from your undergraduate college: "It eliminates your chances of meeting people and expanding out."

John Moore, Monroe and Edna Gutman Professor of Fine Arts Chair at Penn's Graduate School of Fine Arts, also stresses locations as one of the most important things to look for in an MFA program. Moore favors art programs on the East or West coast, "Because you want to be close to New York, or Los Angeles, or San Francisco. New York is the center of the art world. It's important for graduate students to have access to New York in a direct way. The same thing goes for Los Angeles, or, to a lesser extent, San Francisco. You can see new work in magazines, but with visual art it's at the actual presence of the work where the significant interaction takes place."

Take into account where your school is located, and what will that mean for your outside-the-classroom education. Also consider the cost-of-living in your new region: chances are you won't have much spending money, and while the idea of the starving artist may be romantic, real-life participants tend not to recommend it. Which leads to:

5. Look into the financial aid situation.

Danielle chose Iowa, in part, because it is a state school and offered opportunities for TA-ships. In the end, she feels that the opportunity to TA was one of the most important. "It makes you responsible for the education of people coming out of art school who will be your peers, so you start thinking about what an art education should be, and how you can make your own art education better."

Many art schools offer TA opportunities; some even provide tuition remission and stipends. Think hard about cost before accepting an offer. Remember that this isn't law school-it could take an artist many lifetimes to pay off art school loans.

6. Inquire into the conceptual background of the school.

Danielle is grateful for the time and space she's been given in her MFA program but bemoans the lack of connection between her work and her peer's. "I really suggest that prospective students look deeply into the conceptual backdrop of each school," she warns. "If you paint figures, you want someone else who paints figures so that you have someone to talk to. People here don't relate to my work, and that's very difficult."

Figure out how theoretical you want a school to be, or how hands on, and don't be afraid to ask admissions counselor and faculty members about their conceptual stance.

Once you're admitted to a program, request the names and numbers of a few students in different phases of the program. Call them and ask about the social atmosphere.

7. Be prepared to teach.

Danielle suggests that, if you're not excited about teaching, you should apply for residencies instead. "A residency program can do as much as the MFA, in terms of giving you time and space to work." Abigail, who teaches part-time, stresses that the MFA degree does not lead to lucrative careers. "You pay all this money for an advanced degree so that you can get a teaching job that pays nothing. The reason the job pays nothing is that you're in love with your field. So they know that they don't have to pay you anything--you'll do it anyway."

The MFA is considered a terminal degree-meaning, unlike say an MA, there's no other degree (Ph.D.) that might follow. The MFA qualifies you to teach. That's it. Think about that.

Once you're admitted to a program, request the names and numbers of a few students in different phases of the program. Call them and ask about the social atmosphere.

8. Study faculty work.

Fran appreciates that all her instructors are all active artists. "They're all working artists and designers, so they know the business side as well as the art side. There are ten instructors in my program, and I know them all." Abigail found the faculty informative and supportive: "I think as a graduate student you're always going to be closer to your professors than as an undergraduate. I felt I was joining their ranks as a grad student. In the end I felt that the professors were my friends and colleagues."

John Moore also stresses the importance of familiarizing yourself with faculty work before accepting. "If you're a conceptual artist there's going to be a group of schools with faculty who do that, and those will be more attractive to you than others," he says. Indeed, when Moore, a respected figurative realist painter, took over as chair at Penn, applications from realist painters increased noticeably.

Before accepting, make sure there's someone whose work you admire, and make sure that they are accessible as a professor. Often the less-famous artists are the better teachers: you want to work with someone who values teaching, not just their own work.

9. Take some time off.

Consider taking a few years between your undergraduate and graduate degrees. In their time out of school Abigail worked in a photo store and struggled to build her own business, Danielle worked at the University of Pennsylvania Visual Arts program, Fran was a teacher in Trieste, Italy. "I would encourage taking at least 3-5 years off between graduate and undergraduate," says Danielle. "The students who just came from undergraduate feel their social life is so important and that bleeds into the program. The older students really care about their professional careers, not partying. The ones who came straight from college are also more formulaic. They do what they did their senior year-they haven't expanded. They also don't want it as much, because all they've known is school. They don't know 8 hour work days and trying to get to the studio afterwards. They don't know how valuable time is."

Before you decide you need art school to be an artist, try being an artist while working. Some aim for pay-the-rent jobs-waitressing or working in a coffee shop-to free up their minds for their art. Others try to work within the art world: at a gallery, as an artist's assistant, or in an art shop. This can be a good way to learn the business side of the art world-although, as with all business, be prepared to be disillusioned.

10. Be prepared to defend your choice.

Fran bemoans the funny looks she gets from some people when they hear she's at art school. Laughing, she recalls how "at dinner parties when someone is in law school everyone will say, 'Ooh, law school,' and then when I say I go to art school there's just this silence, or an 'Oh.'" Danielle notes that "making art is so integral to your soul that you're really vulnerable. You need to prove that its worthy of your time, your money, and the lifestyle you're going to live. And you need someone outside your family and friends to recognize its value. It's psychologically demanding."

Why endure the funny looks and the inherent insecurity of the MFA life? John Moore, who, before coming to Penn, worked at Boston University and at Temple's Tyler School of Art, praises the MFA option. "Graduate school is attractive because it's a gateway to the profession," he points out. "An MFA is pretty much a necessity for teaching, unless you have a dramatic reputation in your field. But teaching's not the main thing. People go to graduate school as previous generations of artists might have gone to Paris. It's seen as the capstone to a career. Right now, it's the only kind of forum where ideas are in the air and being constantly shaped."

An MFA is only a good career choice if you are committed to a life of art and teaching. If you think art is something you'd like to do on the side, then by all means do so. And skip the MFA.

If, however, you want to put art right smack center in your life, then an MFA program might be just the thing to give you the skills, training, connections, and resources to be a fine artist.

This article was originally created for TheArtBiz.com. It appears on NYFA Interactive courtesy of the Abigail Rebecca Cohen Library.

Art21: Compassion -

2010-11-09T07:20:00.000-08:00

Watch the full episode. See more ART:21.