Monday, May 31, 2010

SHEPARD FAIREY x IGGY POP for INTERVIEW MAGAZINE



Shepard Fairey rose the fame via the Obama campaign. Now, pitted against icon Iggy Pop, Fairey discusses everything from freedom, liberty and the pursuit of the Associated Press against him in an exclusive interview. To read the entire article via Interview Magazine, click HERE.

Friday, May 28, 2010

RAOUL HAUSMANN | "The Art Critic"



Holding a Venus pencil in this right hand, a heeled shoe glued to his brain, his eyes and muth hidden by superimposed features and a sharp segment of a 50 deutschmark bank note embedded in his neck, Hausmann's view of this art critic is both critical and controversial. Through whose eyes does he really see? Whose words does he really speak? And whose payroll is he on?

One of the many self-proclaimed inventors of photomontage, Hausmann used cut-up photographs and pages from newspapers and magazines to construct his world of cynical imagery. This work is an example of the Dada movement, whose members would incorporate ordinary objects into their art, often employing an absurd sense of humour.

In 1925, Hausmann abandoned painting and four years later invented the optophone, an apparatus which turned kaleidoscopic forms into music.


Source:
Adam Butler,
Claire Van Cleave and Susan Stirling
The Art Book
(London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1994)
p.210

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Last days of WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2010| All Day and Night | Pay-What-You-Wish



Whitney Biennial: Open All Day and Night
Wed, May 26 at 12 am–
Fri, May 28 at 11:59 pm
Admission is pay-what-you-wish at the following times:

From 12 am to 9 am on Wed, May 26

From 11 pm on Wed, May 26
to 9 am on Thurs, May 27

From 11 pm on Thurs, May 27
to 9 am on Fri, May 28

From 6 pm to 11:59 pm on Fri, May 28
Regular admission prices are in effect for all other hours.


For more information, go to The Whitney Museum of Art.

Dallas Museum | JACOB LAWRENCE | Coming Soon....



DALLAS, TX.- For the first time in nearly 25 years, the Dallas Museum of Art presents the work of one of America's leading modern figurative painters, Jacob Lawrence (September 7, 1917–June 9, 2000), in a new exhibition, "Jacob Lawrence: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture". Opening on December 6 in the DMA’s Focus Gallery II, the exhibition will showcase a series of fifteen dramatic and colorful silkscreen prints based on a series of forty-one paintings entitled "The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture", Lawrence’s first multi-part narrative series, which was completed in 1938. Rarely exhibited together, the prints, on loan from the Curtis E. Ransom Collection of African American Art, will be presented alongside two important works from the Dallas Museum of Art collections–Lawrence’s painting The Visitors and a portrait of the artist by legendary photographer Arnold Newman.

“In a season of celebration when we are commemorating the Dallas Museum of Art’s 25th anniversary in the Dallas Arts District, we are so pleased to be able to present the brilliant work of artist Jacob Lawrence for a second time in nearly as many years,” said Bonnie Pitman, The Eugene McDermott Director at the Dallas Museum of Art. “Lawrence is one of the great artists of our era and we thank Curtis Ransom, one of Dallas’s most dedicated collectors of African American art, for offering us the opportunity to exhibit these magnificent works at the Museum.”

In 1986, the DMA hosted Jacob Lawrence, American Painter, the artist’s first major museum exhibition since 1974. The Museum loaned its painting "The Visitors" to this critically acclaimed project organized by the Seattle Art Museum that toured, in addition to Dallas, to the Oakland Museum, California; The High Museum of Art in Atlanta; The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.; and the Brooklyn Museum, New York.

"Jacob Lawrence: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture", on view through May 23, 2010, celebrates the artistry of Jacob Lawrence and the life of and history surrounding Toussaint L’Ouverture, a leader in the Haitian revolution. L’Ouverture was born a slave and became a commander in chief of the Haitian revolutionary army in 1800. In 1804, Haiti became the first black Western republic. L’Ouverture was instrumental in drafting independent Haiti’s first democratic constitution.

“Through these powerful works of L’Ouverture and the Haitian revolution, Lawrence presents his vision of humanity’s struggle toward unity and equality,” said Roslyn A. Walker, Senior Curator, The Arts of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific and The Margaret McDermott Curator of African Art at the Dallas Museum of Art. “As one of the 20th century’s most important artists, Lawrence brilliantly chronicled our own country’s social and political life since the 1930s.”

“Lawrence’s works have underlying constants that have defined his style since the beginning,” said Charles Wylie, The Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art. “A visual sensibility rooted in cubism, a compositional format based on serial narratives, and subject matter taken from African American history and contemporary life—all are components within Lawrence’s art that make his style both complex and direct. His work is a truly inventive response and synthesis of the major political, economic and social forces that shaped the modern era.”

Jacob Lawrence was raised in Harlem during the Depression. He was enrolled in the Harlem Art Workshop, which was sponsored by the Works Project Administration, where he became affiliated with a loose confederation of black artists working in New York during the 1930s led by Charles Alston and Augusta Savage.

Lawrence’s painting soon departed from the Harlem street scenes that had characterized his first works for themes derived from black history. Those early narrative sequences were devoted either to the lives of important black figures, such as Toussaint L’Ouverture and American abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, or documented pivotal American events, like the mass movement of southern blacks to the industrialized North as seen in his landmark series The Migration of the American Negro.

Jacob Lawrence became the first African American artist to have his work shown at a major New York gallery when, in 1941, Edith Halpert of the Downtown Gallery exhibited the Migration series. By the close of World War II, his work had won much critical praise, and in 1944 The Museum of Modern Art in New York organized a one-person exhibition of selections from Lawrence’s early narrative series. In the following decades, Lawrence continued to cement his stature and is now generally regarded as one of the most important American artists of the 20th-century.

Visit the Dallas Museum of Art by clicking HERE

Source: AKN

Thursday, May 20, 2010

COMING SOON | "20" by Maison Martin Margiela at Somerset House



The always elusive Maison Marin Margiela exhibit "20" is set to open on June 3, 2010 and run until September 5th. For more, please see the information listed below:

Maison Martin Margiela “20″ The Exhibition
Somerset House
Embankment Galleries
London
WC2

COPS AND ROBBERS | Major artworks stolen in Paris heist



Paris, France (CNN) -- Five paintings, including a Matisse and a Picasso, were stolen overnight from a Paris museum, the Paris mayor's office said Thursday.

The paintings were stolen from the Museum of Modern Art and included works by Georges Braque, Ferdinand Leger and Amedeo Modigliani, French police said.

The artworks are worth a total of just less than 100 million euros ($123.7 million), said Christophe Girard, cultural attache to the Paris town hall, which runs the museum.

Source: CNN

Thursday, May 6, 2010

THE SELBY | Philippe and Jasmine Starck Interior








The home of popular industrial designer Philippe Starck and his wife Jasmine is the latest feature on The Selby. With a storied career based on consumer products ranging from easily consumable items to more intensive designs such as interior design, a glimpse into his home yields some interesting objects and inspirations; Many of which which are perhaps not evident in Starck’s commercial work.

Source:HB

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

REAL TALK: 05.05.10



"Why shouldn't art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world."

-Renior

French Impressionist painter Pierre Auguste Renoir was born in France on February 25, 1841 and died December 3,1919 in Cagnes. Some of his most famous works include "Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette", "Luncheon of the Boating Party" & "Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre and The Bathers." Renior was closely associated with fellows artists Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Frederic Bazille, Henry Fantin-Latour, Camile Pissarro, and Paul Cezanne which would end up forming the Impressionist group.

To view more works, visit The Renoir Gallery online.

PICASSO | $106.5 milion | "Nudes, Green Leaves and Bust"



New York (CNN) -- A Picasso painting fetched nearly $106.5 million at auction Tuesday, a record for any single work of art, Christie's New York said.

"Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" sold for $106,482,500 to an unidentified telephone bidder, the auction house said in a news release.

"Silence fell over the packed saleroom as Christopher Burge conducted nine minutes of bidding that involved eight clients," it said. "Christie's lead auctioneer took bids from a client in the saleroom as well as those on the phone before the competition settled down to two bidders at the $88 million mark and a one-on-one battle ensued. The final bid was hammered down at 7.32 p.m. at $95 million."

The buyer's premium -- the additional fee paid to the auction house -- took the price of the painting to $106.5 million.

"Nude, Green Leaves and Bust," or "Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur," is from the collection of Los Angeles philanthropist Frances Lasker Brody, who died last November and was the wife of the real estate developer Sidney F. Brody. The collection, amassed primarily during the 1940s and 1950s, had been in the family's home since.

Experts had referred to the 1932 work as "lost" because it had never been published in color. It shows Picasso's muse and mistress, Marie-Therese Walter.

The previous highest price for a work at auction was $104,327,006 paid for "L'Homme Qui Marche I, bronze" (Walking Man 1), 1960, by Alberto Giacometti. It sold during an auction at Sotheby's to an anonymous telephone bidder in February, 2010.

The previous high for a Picasso was $104,168,000 for "Garcon a la Pipe" ("Boy with Pipe"), 1905, in May 2004.

Those who missed a chance to bid on the Picasso can bid on its prior owners' 2.27-acre estate in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. The 11,500-square-foot, five-bedroom, four-staff bedroom house was built in 1950 and is listed at $24.95 million, according to Coldwell Banker Previews International.

SOURCE: CNN