Cool stuff from Brooklyn, NY based artist Tom Keating. Keating has a BFA from the Art Institute of Boston. He studied at The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Lorenzo D’Medici in Florence, Italy.
To see more, visit TomKeatingArt.com or his Blogspot.
DAF Group Feature: Vol. 99
Your Weekly Mixx – Enjoy!!
Jeannie Lynn Paske: Obsolete World
Wonderful illustrations from Portland, Oregon based artist Jeannie Lynn Paske.
Obsolete World: “There is a world tucked away behind this one. An old world made up of endless fields,distant hills and timeworn cliffs. A place where the sun is always setting. A land in which extinct slow-moving monsters and elegant gentle-faced creatures of all shapes and sizes reside. Delicately balancing their hope with despair. Reminiscent of long departed dreams and uncollected thoughts. Time stands still here, so as to let the residents gaze in solitude upon the vast, richly textured skies. Forever in search of a place to better sit and watch their world pass them by.”
To see more, visit ObsoleteWorld.blogspot.com.
Manabu Ikeda: Mixed Media
Born in 1973 in Saga, Japan, Manabu Ikeda currently lives and works in Tokyo. Ikeda has a BA in Design and an MA from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.
Ikeda has exhibited his incredibly dense and detailed drawings in numerous solo and group shows in Japan as well as in Germany, Canada, Korea, and Italy. His work is in the public collections of Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art in Shizuoka, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, and the Obuse Museum in Nagano, Japan.
From March 18, 2011 to June 12, 2011, he is participating in the group show “Bye Bye Kitty” at the Japan Society in New York. “Moving far beyond the stereotypes of kawaii and otaku culture, Japan Society’s show features sixteen emerging and mid-career artists whose paintings, objects, photographs, videos, and installations meld traditional styles with challenging visions of Japan’s troubled present and uncertain future. Each of the three sections, “Critical Memory,” “Threatened Nature,” and “Unquiet Dream,” not only offers a feast for the senses but also demolishes our preconceptions about contemporary Japan and its art.”
To see more of Ikeda’s work, visit Mizuma Art.
DAF Group Feature: Vol. 98
Your Monday Mixx – Enjoy!
Top Ten Art Sales of 2010
1. Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust
£68 million ($106.5 million US)
One of a series of highly prized, intimate portraits Picasso painted in 1932 of his lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter With a $70m to $90m (£44-£57m) estimate, this one sold to an anonymous buyer and set a record for any work of art at auction.
2. Giacometti, Walking Man 1
£65 million ($1.3 million US)
Estimated at £12m to £18m, this was the work sparked a lengthy bidding battle before selling to a telephone bidder, later identified as the Brazilian billionaire Lily Safra.
3. Chinese Vase
£51.6 million ($79.5 million US)
Discovered in Pinner, north-west London, this rare, flashy decorated porcelain vase, probably made for a palace of the Emperor Qianlong in the 18th century, attracted Chinese dealers who drove the price to a record for any Chinese work of art.
4. Andy Warhol, Men in Her Life
£39 million ($60 million US)
Experts are puzzling how this painting, the most expensive in New York’s recent contemporary art sales, made more than Warhol’s trademark soup can paintings in the same week of sales.
5. J M W Turner, Modern Rome — Campo Vecchio
£29.7 million ($45.8 million US)
The flow of artwork from Britain’s stately homes continued when this painting, from the collection of the Earl of Rosebery, sold for an artist’s record to the J Paul Getty Museum.
6. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Finding of Moses
£22 million (34 million US)
Highly prized when painted in 1904 but rejected when offered for nothing to British museums in the Sixties, this painting bounced back to fetch an astonishing record, 10 times its estimate, selling to a Middle Eastern buyer.
7. John Robert Cozens, The Lake of Albano and Castel Gandolfo
£2.4 million ($3.7 million US)
The star lot from a collection formed by fertility doctor, Prof Ian Craft, this moody panorama saw Canadian media tycoon, David Thomson, pay a quadruple estimate, record price to see off the competition.
8.Frank Auerbach, Mornington Crescent — Summer Morning
£2.3 million ($3.5 million US)
Auerbach, who will be 80 next year, has been enjoying a price boom and this was his highest price to date.
9. Sir Peter Paul Rubens (suspected), Portrait of a Bearded Man
£692,000 ($1 million US)
Catalogued as a 19th-century painting in the “manner of Rubens” with a £1,500 estimate, this sold to dealer Philip Mould, who believed it to be a genuine Rubens but has yet to exhibit it as such.
10. Ged Quinn – Jonestown Radio
£187,250 ($289,000 US)
White Cube gallery’s Jay Jopling, bought this for about £20,000 in 2005. This was only the third painting by the 47-year-old Briton to appear at auction. It sold to an Asian buyer whom Sotheby’s said had never heard of Quinn before this sale.
Source: The Telegraph (UK)
5 Women Artists You Should Know: Vol. 6
1. Yayoi Kusama – March 22, 1929 – Born in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, Kusama is a sculptor, painter, writer, installation artist and performance artist. As a child she experienced hallucinations and visions of polka dots and net patterns, and had severe obsessive thoughts. Early in her career, she began covering surfaces including walls, floors, canvases, household objects, and naked assistants with the polka dots (“infinity nets”) that became a trademark of her work.
In 1957 Kusama moved to New York and quickly established a reputation for herself in predominantly male avant-garde art circles. She was very ambitious and used her position as a non-American woman and her history of mental illness to create a flamboyant public persona.
During her time in New York, her work was linked with both Minimalism and Pop Art, but it was never assimilated by any one artistic movement, as her work constantly evolved during this period. In 1973 she returned to Tokyo, where she began to write fiction.
After leaving New York, Kusama was almost forgotten until the late 1980’s and 90’s when a number of retrospectives renewed international interest. In 1993, she represented Japan in the Venice Biennale and in October 2006, she became the first Japanese woman to receive the Praemium Imperiale, one of Japan’s most prestigious prizes for internationally recognized artists.
2. Kara Walker – November 26, 1969 – Born in Stockton, California, Walker has a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes that examine the underbelly of America’s racial and gender tensions. Her works often address themes such as power, repression, history, race, and sexuality.
In the 1997, Walker was included in the Whitney Biennial at the age of 27, and became the youngest recipient of the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” grant. In 2002 she was chosen to represent the United States in the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in the collections of major museums worldwide. In 2007 Walker Art Center organized the exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Oppressor, My Enemy, My Love – the artist’s first full-scale U.S. museum survey. Walker currently lives in New York, where she is a professor of visual arts in the MFA program at Columbia University.
3. Elisabetta Sirani – January 8, 1638 – 1665 – Born in Bologna, Italy, Sirani was an independent painter by age 19, ran her family’s workshop, and supported supported her parents, three siblings, and herself entirely through her art after her father became incapacitated by illness.
Sirani quickly became known for her ability to paint beautifully finished canvases so quickly that art lovers visited her studio to watch her work. Her portraits, mythological subjects, and images of the Holy Family and the Virgin and Child, gained international fame. Her works were acquired by wealthy, noble, and even royal patrons, including the Grand Duke Cosimo III de Medici.
Sirani died-suddenly at the age of 27, after experiencing severe stomach pains. Her father suspected that she had been poisoned by a jealous maid and the servant was tried but acquitted. An autopsy revealed stomach ulcers as the cause of death. In her short career, Sirani produced 200 paintings, drawings, and etchings.
4. Camille Claudel – December 8, 1864 – October 19, 1943 – Born in Fère-en-Tardenois, Aisne, Claudel was a French sculptor, graphic artist, and the older sister of the French poet and diplomat, Paul Claudel. In 1881, she moved with her family to Paris. Claudel studied sculpture at the Académie Colarossi with Alfred Boucher and met Rodin in 1883. She became his studio assistant in 1885. Claudel became a source of inspiration, his model, his confidante and lover.
Claudel ended her relationship with Rodin in 1898 and struggled for artistic independence. Overcome by an emotional crisis, she secluded herself in her studio and destroyed a large number of her works, accusing Rodin of plagarism. In 1913, her brother Paul had her confined to a psychiatric hospital and she lived in institutions for the remaining 30 years of her life.
Camille Claudel died on October 19, 1943. About 90 statues, sketches and drawings survive. She is considered by many to be the first important European female sculptor.
5. Tamara De Lempicka – May 16, 1898–March 18, 1980 – Born Tamara Maria Gorska in Warsaw, Poland, de Lempicka was a Polish Art Deco painter. In 1917, she and her husband Tadeusz Lempicki escaped the Russian Revolution and moved to Paris where she studied at the Academie Ranson and at the studio of cubist artist André Lhote. She quickly developed a style that combined neo-classical colours with cubism in the Art Deco style that was prominent in Paris at the time.
De Lempicka was one of the most sought after painters of the 1920’s and 30’s. From 1923 onwards, she exhibited in the major Salons and in the early 1930’s, American museums began purchasing her work. Focused constantly on her work and social life, Lempicka neglected her husband and daughter Kizette. “Famous for her libido, she was bisexual, and her affairs with both men and women were carried out in ways that were scandalous at the time.” Tamara and Tadeusz divorced in 1928.
In 1933, de Lempicka married her patron and lover Baron Raoul Kuffner and the couple moved to the U.S. in 1939. She continued to live in a lavish style but her popularity as a society painter diminished greatly. She continued to work in her trademark style but also began painting still lifes, abstracts, and started using a palette knife. Her exhibit in 1962 at the Iolas Gallery was not well-received and de Lempicka retired from active life as a professional artist. In 1978 Tamara moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, to live among an aging international set and some of the younger aristocrats. She died there on March 19, 1980.
Sources: National Museum of Women in the Arts (Sirani), Walker Art Center (Walker), MoMA (Kusama), Walker Art Center (Kusama), Wikipedia (Kusama), NMWA (Claudel), Wikipedia (Claudel), 50 Women Artists You Should Know (Claudel, de Lempicka), Tamara-de-Lempicka.org
Stacey Rozich: Illustration
Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Stacey Rozich studied Illustration at California College of Arts in San Francisco. Her work varies from bold folk art in watercolor and gouache, to simple pen and ink line drawings that is pattern and textile inspired. Featured in her work are tribal animal masks, witch doctors, optical designs and delicately brushed beasts.
“I’m working to create a narrative about an early culture and their relationship with nature and animals. Besides that, I like the viewer to come up with his or her own interpretation of my work. Usually it’s a very nostalgic reaction, a sense of these tales being long forgotten yet hauntingly familiar.”
Rozich’s inspirations include Yugoslav costumes and traditions, West African tribal masks, matryoshka dolls, early German woodblock prints, the human form by Paul Gauguin, Egon Shiele, and Klimt, Henri Rousseau’s lush jungles, Dan Clowes, Charley Harper, and her father John Rozich.
To see more of Rozich’s work, visit StaceyRozich.com.
Sources: Fecal Face
5 Women Artists You Should Know: Vol. 5
1. Catherina van Hemessen – Born in 1528 in Antwerp, Belgium. Van Hemessen trained under her father Jan Sanders van Hemessen and eventually helped him with his commissions as well as receiving her own. Her 1548 painting “Girl at the Spinet” is thought to be the earliest surviving self-portrait of an artist at work.
Creating mainly portraits, Van Hemessen’s subjects were often seated and were usually set against a dark or neutral background. There are no known works after 1554 after her marriage to Cathedral organist Chrétien de Morien. Van Hemessen died in Antwerp around 1587.
2. Paula Modersohn-Becker – Born on February 8, 1876 in Dresden-Friedrichstadt, Germany, Modersohn-Becker was one of the most important representatives of early expressionism. Women, motherhood and nature were frequent themes in Modersohn-Becker’s paintings. Her images consisted of thickly applied paint with forms that were rough and angular with bold outlines.
Sadly, Modersohn-Bercker’s career lasted just seven years. During that time, she produced more than 700 paintings and 1,000 drawings. On November 20, 1907, shortly after the birth of their daughter Mathilde, Modersohn-Becker died from an embolism. She was 31 years old.
3. Jenny Holzer – Born in 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio, Holzer is an American conceptual artist known for LED sculptures. Holzer studied at Ohio University, Rhode Island School of Design, and the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Before she began working with text art, Holzer was an abstract artist, focusing on painting and printmaking.
As well as LEDs, Holzer also works with other media including bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection and the Internet. “Her works often speak of violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death. Her main concern is to enlighten, bringing to light something thought in silence and was meant to remain hidden.”
In 1990, Holzer became the first woman to design the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale and won the country prize for her work.
4. Lee Krasner – Born on October 27, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York, Krasner was an influential abstract expressionist painter and the wife of Jackson Pollock. From 1928-32, she studied at The Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design in New York, and worked on the WPA Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1943. In 1937, she took classes with Hans Hofmann, whose influence directed Krasner’s work toward neo-cubist abstraction.
In 1941, Krasner met Jackson Pollock and the couple married four years later. “During their marriage, she neglected her own artistic work, though she never regarded herself as inferior or dependent on Pollock”. From 1946–47, Krasner began to produce her first mature work, the “Little Image” series. “Three groups of Little Images emerged, all-over staccato dabs, thinly skinned, dripped linear networks and rows of tiny runic forms.
From 1953-55, Krasner moved into the medium of collage. She pasted large shapes cut from her own and Pollock’s discarded canvases in her works. Her admiration for Henri Matisse is shown in these and later works.
After Pollock’s death in 1956, Krasner created her most memorable paintings – “large gestural works generated by whole body movement. From 1959 to 1962, she poured out her feelings of loss in explosive bursts of sienna, umber and white. By the mid-1960s, she began painting lushly coloured, sharply focused, emblematic floral forms, taking a more lyrical and decorative Fauvist-inspired approach. During her last period of activity, the mid- to late 1970s, she returned to collage.”
Lee Krasner died in 1984 at the age of 75. Her will established the Pollock–Krasner Foundation whose purpose is to help artists in need.
5. Niki De Saint Phalle – Born on October 29, 1930 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, France, Saint Phalle was a French sculptor, painter, and film maker. After the stock market crash in 1930, the family moved to New York. From 1948-49 de Saint Phalle worked as a model, appearing in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and on the cover of Life Magazine.
“De Saint Phalle is best known for her over-sized figures which embrace contradictory qualities such as good and evil, modern and primitive, sacred and profane, play and terror. Her exaggerated “earth mother” sculptures, the Nanas, playfully explore the ancient of feminine deities while celebrating modern feminism’s efforts to reconsider and revalue the woman’s body. In recent years de Saint Phalle made monsters and beasts into architectural forms for playgrounds and schools. These works demonstrate her deep interest in architects like Antoni Gaudi, who made organic fluid buildings incorporating wild fantasies and everyday objects.”
Near the end of her life, and after more than 20 years of work, De Saint Phalle’s sculpture garden, called Giardino dei Tarocchi, (Tarot Garden) opened in 1998. Niki de Saint Phalle died on May 21, 2002 at the age of 71 in La Jolla, California.
Sources: 50 Women Artists You Should Know, Wikipedia (Becker), Wikipedia (Holzer), Stuart Collection (de Saint Phalle), Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, Wikipedia, MoMA (Krasner),
Michael Fields: Painting/Drawing
Michael Fields is a self-taught artist based in Portland, Oregon. His work focuses “primarily on the duality that exists inside each and every one of us. The feral beast confounded by logic and order… the internal struggle between instinct and knowledge…” (from artist website) Fields is also a graphic designer and WordPress developer.
To see more, visit MFields.org.
