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Elaine Fried de Kooning: 1918-1989

March 12, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Portrait-of-JFK---Elaine-de-Kooning-1963

Born on March 12, 1918 (or 1920) in Brooklyn, New York, Elaine Marie Catherine Fried de Kooning was a painter, sculptor, draughtswoman, printmaker, writer, and wife of influential artist Willem de Kooning.

De Kooning studied in New York at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, the American Art School, the Academy School, and with Willem de Kooning. She was interested in both figurative and abstract art, acknowledging the influence of her husband and of the Abstract Expressionists of the New York School.

Elaine met Willem de Kooning in 1938 and the couple married  in 1943. They had a  turbulent marriage, separating in 1956 and reconciling in 1975. Though they benefited from one  another’s art and teaching, they also suffered from each other’s infidelities and struggles with alcoholism.

During the 1940s, de Kooning painted portraits of her family, her husband, and many of her literary friends and fellow artists, including the poets Frank O’Hara and Allen Ginsberg and the choreographer Merce Cunningham.

De Kooning had her first solo exhibition  at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1952 and exhibited almost annually thereafter throughout the United States, including shows at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and Washington Gallery of Modern Art in 1964.

In 1962,  de Kooning was commissioned by the White House to paint the portrait of President John F. Kennedy. The portrait is one of de Kooning’s most well known and celebrated paintings. Following his assassination in 1963, de Kooning stopped painting for a year and took a teaching appointment at the University of California, Davis.

In the 1970s, de Kooning taught at numerous colleges including Yale University, Pratt Institute, University of Pennsylvania, and Rice University, and others.

While de Kooning, like the “action” painters of the time, used gestural brushstrokes, most her work was figurative and representational,  and rarely pure abstraction.  An avid traveler, “she was exposed to and inspired by a wide variety of art work that helped make her one of the more diverse artists from the Abstract Expressionist movement; she experimented with sculpture, etchings and subject matter inspired by cave drawings, all in addition to her wealth of painting, which included everything from watercolors and still lifes to abstractions and formal portraits.”

De Kooning’s works are in the collections of numerous major American museums, including the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, and the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

Elaine de Kooning died of lung cancer on February 1, 1989. Willem de Kooning,  suffering from dementia at the time, was never  told of his wife’s death.

Bullfight-Elaine de Kooning-1961
Untitled Abstraction-Elaine de Kooning-1958-60
Untitled-Elaine de Kooning-1957-60
Bacchus-3--Elaine-DeKooning-1978
Self Portrait-Elaine de Kooning-1946
Portrait-of-JFK---Elaine-de-Kooning-1963
Portrait-of-Jack-Greenbaum-Elaine-de-Kooning-1959
Pele No. 1 -Elaine de Kooning-1982
Fairfield-Porter---Elaine-de-Kooning-1954
Elaine de Kooning
Bacchus No. 69 - Elaine de Kooning-1982
Bacchus -Jardin de Luxemburg-Elaine de Kooning
An Opening Egan Gallery-Elaine de Kooning-1948-52
Untitled-Elaine de Kooning-1957-60
Self Portrait-Elaine de Kooning-1946
Untitled Abstraction-Elaine de Kooning-1958-60

Sources: Crown Point Press, The Art Story

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Filed Under: ART, Art History, Painting, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: Abstract Expressionism, American Art, Elaine Fried de Kooning

Jeff Koons: Neo Pop Art

January 21, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Jeff Koons - Gazing Ball - Manet Luncheon on the Grass - 2014-15jpgBorn on January 21, 1955, in York, Pennsylvania, Jeff Koons studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art (BFA 1976), in Baltimore and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

“Since his emergence in the 1980s Jeff Koons has blended the concerns and methods of Pop, Conceptual, and appropriation art with craft-making and popular culture to create his own unique art iconography, often controversial and always engaging. His work explores contemporary obsessions with sex and desire; race and gender; and celebrity, media, commerce, and fame. A self-proclaimed “idea man,” Koons hires artisans and technicians to make the actual works. For him, the hand of the artist is not the important issue: “Art is really just communication of something and the more archetypal it is, the more communicative it is.””

Koon’s moved to New York in 1977 where he began working at the membership desk of the Museum of Modern Art. He quickly became known for his outrageous hair and clothing, and for his salesmanship. During this time, he created sculptures using inflatable flowers, and rabbits mixed with plastic, plexiglass, and mirrors. In order to finance his “The New” series, Koons left MoMA in 1980 to sell mutual funds and stocks at First Investors Corporation. This series featured vacuum cleaners and shampoo polishers encased in  plexiglass atop fluorescent lights.

In 1985, Koon’s presented his “Equilibrium” series which included sculptures made of basketballs floating in tanks of water, or encased in glass. In 1986, Koons’ 41 inch high stainless steel rabbit gained a great deal of critical attention. His “Luxury and Degradation” series in 1986 depticts “consumerist decadence” and featured images of liquor advertisements and stainless steel renderings of liquor travel bars.  In his “Banality” series of 1988, Koons expanded on the “Luxury and Degradation” series producing sculptures including Michael Jackson and Bubbles the monkey, as well as a series of “ads” where Koons mocks  himself and his own celebrity. His “Made in Heaven” series in 1990 depicts the artist with his wife, Ilona Staller, in a variety of hard-core pornographic poses.

Since the mid 1990’s, Koons has continued to produce sculpture but has also focused on paintings that contain pop-culture references as well more abstract composition.

Criticism of Koons’ work is varied. “Some view his work as pioneering and of major art-historical importance. Others dismiss his work as kitsch: crass and based on cynical self-merchandising”.

Since his first solo exhibition in 1980, Koons’s work has been shown in major galleries and institutions throughout the world. His work is the subject of a major exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, Jeff Koons: A Retrospective (June 27 – October 19, 2014), which traveled to the Centre Pompidou Paris (November 26, 2014 – April 27, 2015) and the Guggenheim Bilbao (June 12 – September 27, 2015). Recent exhibitions in Europe include Jeff Koons in Florence installed at Palazzo Vecchio and Piazza della Signoria, Florence, Italy (September 25 – December 28, 2015) and Balloon Venus (Orange), which is currently on view in the rotunda of the Natural History Museum Vienna, Austria (September 30 – March 13, 2016). Gazing Ball Paintings, Koons’s most recent series, was exhibited for the first time at Gagosian Gallery, New York (November 12 – December 23, 2015).

For more information, visit JeffKoons.com.  (all images copyright © Jeff Koons)




Jeff Koons - Gazing Ball - Manet Luncheon on the Grass - 2014-15jpg



Sources: Guggenheim, Wikipedia, JeffKoons.com, Walker Art Center
Image Sources: TheGirlsNY via Flickr, Artnet

Filed Under: ART, Art History, Mixed Media, Sculpture Tagged With: American Art, Jeff Koons, Jeff Koons Birthday, Neo Pop Art, Pop Art

George Tooker: 1920 – 2011

August 5, 2014 By Wendy Campbell

Born on August 5, 1920, in Brooklyn, New York, George Clair Tooker Jr. grew up in suburban Bellport, Long Island and took painting lessons from a family friend as a child.  Tooker  graduated from Harvard University in 1942 where he studied English Literature and continued to pursue his interest in art.

Tooker was discharged from officer training school in the U.S. Marines during World War II due to illness brought on by stress. In 1943, he enrolled in the Art Students League in New York and studied under leading social realist painters Reginald Marsh and Kenneth Hayes Miller.  Tooker was introduced to the medium of egg tempera by painter Paul Cadmus, with whom he spent six months together traveling and studying art in Italy and France in 1949. In 1949, Tooker also met painter William Christopher, who became his lifelong companion.

In 1950, Tooker began to earn both recognition and income from his art and in 1953, the Whitney Museum bought his best-known painting, The Subway. Further recognition followed, beginning with a solo exhibition at a New York gallery in 1951; followed by four  more solo shows and numerous group exhibitions.

“Working on wood panels or Masonite board, Tooker painstakingly built luminous matte surfaces, inch by square inch; soft, powdery colors complemented the rounded forms and fabrics of the paintings.” His early work depicted social and public issues, and stresses the loneliness and alienation of modern urban existence. In the 1970s, the Tooker began to explore more personal states of being expressed in symbolic imagery, often drawn from the bible, mythology, and classic literature.

Tooker’s works have been associated with the Magic Realism and Social Realism movements but he resisted attempts to define his works as such. “I am after reality — painting impressed on the mind so hard that it recurs as a dream,” he said, “but I am not after dreams as such, or fantasy.”

In 1960, Tooker and Christopher moved to Vermont, where they had a weekend home. Tooker taught at the Art Students League between 1965 and 1968, and they spent winters on the Mediterranean coast of Spain as Christopher’s health declined. Tooker returned to Vermont, in 1973 after Christopher’s death.

“In the 1970s, the Tooker began to explore more personal states of being expressed in symbolic imagery, often drawn from the bible, mythology, and classic literature. Tooker, though greatly respected, remained apart from the modernist trends that dominated American art for much of the second half of the twentieth century.”

In 2007, Tooker was awarded the National Medal of Arts – the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States Government.

George Tooker died on March 27, 2011 at his home in Hartland, Vermont.  He was 90 years old.





Sources: New York Times, Terra Foundation
Post inspired by David Platt

Filed Under: ART, Painting Tagged With: American Art, George Tooker, Magic REalism, Social Realism

Megan Kimber: Painting

March 9, 2013 By Wendy Campbell

Megan-KimberBorn and raised in Poughkeepsie, New York, Megan Kimber graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 1997 with a BFA in Illustration. After living and creating in Orlando, Florida and New York, she then moved to Savannah, Georgia, where she received her MFA in Illustration from The Savannah College of Art and Design. She now resides in Birmingham, Alabama.

Inspired by the color palette of the light at dusk, Kimber depicts psychological portrait studies within environments reminiscent of the Brother’s Grimm Fairy tales. When it comes to her characters, she finds beauty in flaws. Ultimately, her biggest inspiration is nature – animal movements, fossils, colors found in light and shadow, objects worn and atrophied by forces of nature. Costumes, rituals, and anything else symbolic of a specified sacred celebration is what provides her man-made inspiration.

Kimber’s paintings have been exhibited in Birmingham, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco, Savannah, NY, Orlando, and Providence.

Her illustration work has been published with Lipstick magazine, Yellow Brand Skateboards, an upcoming CD project from Kebbi Williams, and Ancestry Magazine. (bio from Matt Jones Gallery)

To see more of Megan Kimber’s work, visit MeganKimber.com.




Filed Under: ART, Illustration, Painting, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: American Art, Megan Kimber

Robert Williams: Juxtapoz

March 2, 2013 By Wendy Campbell

Born on March 2, 1943, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Robert Williams is a well-known painter and founder of Juxtapoz Art and Culture Magazine. Williams studied painting at Los Angeles City College and at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Early in his career, Williams designed containers for the Weyehaeuser Corporation and was a designer for Black Belt magazine. In 1965, he became art director for Ed “Big Daddy” Roth –  the artist and cartoonist who created the hot-rod icon Rat Fink and other characters. In the late 1960’s, Williams joined the Zap Comix collective of artists, a non-conformist, anti-establishment movement that included R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Spain Rodriguez, Rick Griffin, Gilbert Shelton, and Victor Moscoso.

Williams published his first book, The Lowbrow Art of Robert Williams in 1979. The title of the book was meant as a statement on the current “Highbrow” tone of the art world and how Williams’ work did not fit in. Of the term “Lowbrow” Williams denies that it was ever meant to define the movement, but was merely used in the title of his first collection. He says “There was never any intention to make the title of my book the name of a fledgling art movement but, over time, that seems to be what has transpired.” In his 2008 lecture at the Oakland Museum of California, Williams stated: “The Art movement I go by is Conceptual Realism.”

In 1994 Williams founded Juxtapoz Art and Culture Magazine with a group of artists and collectors. The publication’s mission statement was to “present art that is provocative, technically adept and worthy of exposure”. “Today, Juxtapoz is widely credited with being the unifying force that drew together the various satellite art movements like street art and Pop Surrealism, into one coherent movement of “alternative art” that evolved during the late ’90s and early ’00s.”  The magazine currently has one of the highest circulations of any art magazine in the United States.

Williams’ work has been exhibited around the world including Helter Skelter: L.A., Art in the 1990s at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 1992,the 1993 exhibition Kustom Kulture at the Laguna Art Museum, as well at the 2010 Whitney Biennial. Aside from his first book, Williams has published “Malicious Resplendence”, “Zombie Mystery Painting”, “Visual Addiction”, “Views from a Tortured Libido”, “Through Prehensile Eyes”, and “Conceptual Realism: In the Service of the Hypothetical”.

Williams currently lives in the Chatsworth, California with wife, artist Suzanne Williams. For more information about Robert Williams, visit RobertWilliamsStudio.com.

Appetite-for-Destruction - Guns N Roses Cover-Robert-Williams
Bastardizing-the-Autonomy-of-Person-Place-and-Thing-Robert-Williams
The-Persuasion-of-Right-Angles-Robert-Williams

Court-Em-All-Let-Cupid-Sort-Em-Out-Robert-Williams-2008
Brute-Waste---9'-tall-fiberglass-resin-and-steel-Robert-Williams
Swap-Meet-Sally-Robert-Williams-2006

Dimaond in a Goat's Ass 9' tall fiberglass resin and steel-Robert Williams
Greater-Concerns-than-Mere-Puppetry-Robert-Williams
Enchiladas-de-Amore-Robert_Williams

Art's Triumph Over Substance-Robert Williams
The Girl With the Faberge Ass-Robert Williams
Pavillion-of-the-Red-Clown-Robert-Williams

Mr-Bitchin-Poster-Robert-Williams
Interview-with-a-Composite-Abomination--Robert-Williams
Robert-Williams-Juxtapoz-Cover

Zap-Comics---Robert-Williams

Sources: Bein Art, Wikipedia, Arrested Motion, Artnet, Lowbrow Art World

 

Filed Under: ART, Illustration, Painting Tagged With: American Art, Juxtapoz, Lowbrow Art, Mr Bitchin, Pop Surrealism, Robert Williams

Mark Ryden: Pop Surrealism

January 20, 2013 By Wendy Campbell

Happy birthday to Mark Ryden (featured) who was born on this day (Jan 20, 1963).

Blending themes of pop culture with techniques reminiscent of the old masters, Mark Ryden has created a singular style that blurs the traditional boundaries between high and low art. His work first garnered attention in the 1990s when he ushered in a new genre of painting, “Pop Surrealism”, dragging a host of followers in his wake. Ryden has trumped the initial surrealist strategies by choosing subject matter loaded with cultural connotation.

Ryden’s vocabulary ranges from cryptic to cute, treading a fine line between nostalgic cliché and disturbing archetype. Seduced by his infinitely detailed and meticulously glazed surfaces, the viewer is confronted with the juxtaposition of the childhood innocence and the mysterious recesses of the soul. A subtle disquiet inhabits his paintings; the work is achingly beautiful as it hints at darker psychic stuff beneath the surface of cultural kitsch. In Ryden’s world cherubic girls rub elbows with strange and mysterious figures. Ornately carved frames lend the paintings a baroque exuberance that adds gravity to their enigmatic themes.

Mark Ryden received a BFA in 1987 from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. His paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including a retrospective “Wondertoonel” at the Frye Museum of Art in Seattle and Pasadena Museum of California Art, and in the exhibition “The Artist’s Museum” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles. (bio from artist’s website)

Ryden will have an exhibition of new paintings entitled “The Gay 90’s: West” at the Michael Kohn Gallery. Dates to be announced soon.

Learn more at MarkRyden.com and why not hop on over to his Facebook page and wish him a happy birthday!


Filed Under: ART, Painting Tagged With: American Art, Mark Ryden, Pop Surrealism

Margo Selski: Painting

January 18, 2013 By Wendy Campbell

Washington based artist Margo Selski is known for her “lush Surrealist paintings that quote Flemish painting and 19th century portraiture.”  Selski has a B.A. in Studio Art and Art Education Berea College, inKentucky, an Master of Arts for Children S.U.N.Y. Brockport, New York, and a Master in Fine Art in drawing and painting from the University of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Of her paintings, Selski says: “My work may seem to parody old masterpieces. I create a theatre and people it with an ornate cast: queens, mothers, children, predators, prey, florae, faunae. They live in airless, still places where each creature knows whom she should love or hate. But then, the balances become uncertain. Relationships become inverted. Mothers become children. Children become empty eggs. Princesses become wolves. Eggs, children, families, all start to divide and become something unrecognizable. Soon, no one knows how they should think or feel. My sparkling utopia becomes unstable. Yet still, the unbending wish for love, certainty, permanence. So I lift the brush again. In this pose am I kept.”

To see more, visit Glass Garage Gallery.




Filed Under: ART, Painting Tagged With: American Art, Margo Selski, Surrealism

Rodney Smith: Photography

January 6, 2013 By Wendy Campbell

Celebrated photographer Rodney Smith graduated from the University of Virginia in 1970 and earned a Master of Divinity in Theology from Yale University in 1973. While at Yale, he also studied photography under Walker Evans.

In 1975, Smith received a Jerusalem Foundation Fellowship which enabled him to travel to Jerusalem for three months. The photos taken there resulted in his first book “In the Land of Light” which was published in 1983.

As well as his personal work, Smith has been commissioned for numerous major commercial assignments including American Express, IBM, Heinz, Starbucks Coffee, Ralph Lauren, The New York Times Magazine and others. His work has been exhibited in dozens of shows, has won approximately 75 awards, and is represented in numerous major galleries around the world.  Smith is also a teacher and has an adjunct professorship at Yale University.

Smith’s second book, “The Hat Book” was published in 1993 as well as his book “The End” in 2008.  He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Snedens Landing – a community near New York City.

To see more of Smith’s work, visit RodneySmith.com.




Sources: Artnet

Filed Under: ART, Photography Tagged With: American Art, American photography, Rodney Smith

Dan May: Painting 2012

December 6, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

More “gentle monsters” from Dan May (featured).  “May is a fine artist currently living in Cincinnati, OH. A native of Rochester, NY, Dan attended Syracuse University where he achieved a BFA and began to immediately pursue his artistic interests. As a modern narrative painter, May cultivates a rich texture of the surreal and mysterious in his highly original flowing style. His detail-intensive works have become widely recognized for their dreamlike ability to transcend the natural states of space and time – mostly due to his usage of a very finely honed usage of line. May’s propensity for using hair as a metaphor has become a focal point that he has built on to speak about larger aspects of humanity as well as the dream world, and gives a strong nod to his progressive personal growth and evolution as an artist.

Dan has exhibited his paintings to consistently growing interest in the gallery world and is enthusiastically held in high regard by collectors the world over. May spends the majority of his time either in the studio creating new and inspiring paintings, or with his lovely wife and business manager, Kendal. His paintings have graced the pages of international publications as Hi Fructose Magazine, DPI and Communication Arts among others.”

See more at DanMay.net.



Filed Under: ART, Painting Tagged With: American Art, Dan May

Lyle Carbajal: Painting

October 12, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

idolos © Lyle-CarbajalAmerican artist Lyle Carbajal uses his paintings to explore the unintentional. “Through the use of color, bold line and image placement he hopes to capture the naiveté of daily life.” Influences include the Brut and Cobra groups of past and present, the naïve artists of Latin America, graphic designers and illustrators, religious painters, and children.

“His focus on the face is evident in each painting, where visages are wild-eyed and gripped with anger, terror, confusion or pain.  The depictions of extreme emotive states in his paintings are as raw and innocent as those of a child.  Childhood memories and his Latin American background have helped Carbajal search for a primitive expression of the world.”

Of his work Carbajal says, “Although I lack a formal education in painting, a degree in design taught me to see shapes, colors, typography and distinct references. Life’s landscape, on the other hand, taught me about Mexican masks and muralism, functional graphics, vandalism, Haitian flags, folk signage, randomness and urbanism, all which find their way into my work. It is through this extensive knowledge of both popular and primitive cultures that helps in the creation of my pictures.”

Carbajal’s work has been exhibited in galleries around the world including Museu de Estremoz in Portugal, the Caro D’Offay Gallery in Chicago, and Art Fair in Denmark.

To see more of Carbajal’s paintings, visit LyleCarbajal.com.  There is also a good interview on ArtQuotes.net.




Related Books:
Naive Art (Art of Century)
Naïve Art

Naive: Modernism and Folklore in Contemporary Graphic Design

Sources: Tinney Contemporary

Filed Under: ART Tagged With: American Art, Lyle Carbajal, Naive Art

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