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Saturday, May 29, 2010
Most Hilarious Infield Cruisers
The NASCAR infield camper is an art-car form unto itself, and the pageantry, functionality, and dirtball-appeal of these infield rigs are aspects that fans strive to outdo each other on. Hit the jump to check out highlights from the rugged rigs of the Charlotte infield.
NASCAR coverage brought to you by Valvoline Engine Guarantee–the first and only motor oil in the industry that will guarantee your engine up to 300,000 miles. *Registration required, some limitations apply.
NASCAR coverage brought to you by Valvoline Engine Guarantee–the first and only motor oil in the industry that will guarantee your engine up to 300,000 miles. *Registration required, some limitations apply.
Picasso’s muse
| The story behind Picasso’s most expensive artwork is fascinating as it relates to the turbulent love affair of the celebrated middle-aged artist and the young Marie-Therese, writes Janardhan Roye | |
 On Saturday January 8, 1927, a pretty 17-year-old was shopping in the fashionable Galeries Lafayette in Paris’ Boulevard Haussmann. She stood innocently transfixed in the big store taking in the City of Light’s sweetest luxury, a free fashion parade: Tall, leggy models flaunting haute-couture threads. Unknown to her a well-known impressionist painter-modern artist arrived on the scene, sighted the ‘blonde, sunny and bright’ beauty and couldn’t take his eyes off her. So smitten was he by love at first sight.Even as the paparazzi exploded camera flash bulbs around him and fans waved pieces of paper for autographs or a chance hand-shake, Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973), the ‘first rock-star artist whose wild visions gripped the world’s imagination and changed 20th century art for ever’ was well and truly taken in by the ‘voluptuous’ teenager. Never mind that he was (a) 45, (b) married to a beautiful ballerina, Olga Khokhlova, and (c) a celebrity much in the public eye, the painter, draughtsman and sculptor threw caution to the winds and strode towards his quarry. What followed is history. And one of the most memorable pick-up lines, “Miss, you have an interesting face. I would like to do your portrait. I have a feeling we will do great things together. I am Picasso.” The stunned young ‘innocent open-air girl’ Marie-Thérèse Walter (1910-1977) was left speechless, gasping but managed to smile. It was the beginning of romance, if a vexed one, of a remarkable artist and his model and muse. They would do great things together, the blonde and the famous painter. Today they are back in the news for an entirely different reason. The painting from their 1932 series ‘Nude, Green Leaves and Bust’ (Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur, in French) has been sold at a New York City auction for US $106.5 million (about Rs 480 crores), setting up a new world record for a work of art sold at auction. The previous record-holder was Giacometti’s sculpture, ‘Walking Man I’ (1960) sold for $104.3 million, while yet another Picasso creation, ‘Garçon à la Pipe’ or ‘Boy with a Pipe’ (1905), was auctioned for $104.1 million, making ‘Nude…’ the most expensive painting sold at auction. The ‘sensuous and stunning’ oil painting measuring 160cm x 130cm on a vibrant blue and lilac canvas was executed when Picasso was 50 years old. The painting depicts a profile of the artist on a pedestal observing the naked figure of Marie-Thérèse with philodendron leaves and some fruit in the background. ‘Nude…’ had been in the private collection of Los Angeles millionaire constructor and modern art lover, Sidney and Frances Brody since the 1950s, and was exhibited to the public only once, in 1961. The story behind this, the most expensive artwork, is fascinating as it relates to the turbulent love affair of the middle-aged Picasso and the young Marie-Thérèse. “Picasso pulled off this moment of seduction as if he were Zeus descending from Olympus and carrying off a young nymph who had caught his fancy,” says Michael Fitzgerald, describing the chance encounter of the model and artist in his essay, ‘Pablo Picasso: Picasso’s Marie-Thérèse’. The birth of ‘Nude…’ can be traced to that evening when the wide-eyed teenager and the painter walked to a quiet corner for a little tête-à-tête in January 1927. Even while art history was being written, it was the beginning of a sizzling romance that shocked bohemian Paris. And as per biographer John Richardson the ‘genial genius’ who built up a reputation as ‘a predator who gobbled up visual stimuli and wolfed down friends, employees and lovers,’ Picasso had fallen obsessively in love. An affair that would continue for 10 years and produce a daughter, Maia or María de la Concepción in 1935. After the first chance meeting, Picasso whisked off the pretty blonde the very next day in his chauffer-driven Hispano-Suiza Pourtout to a secret rendezvous. From there the pair kept meeting surreptitiously at all odd places and odd parts of the day. Even though Marie had taken up an apartment opposite the Picassos in 23, rue La Boetie and they frequently met, or later she spent long hours in the vast sculpture studio in the secluded Chateau de Boisgeloup some 40 miles away from Paris that Picasso acquired in 1930 — Olga had no clue to their romance. And she had no reason to doubt his fidelity. Picasso played good husband to Olga who was the mother of his young son, Paulo, whom he adored. But the fact was otherwise. Throughout his life Picasso had a string of mistresses in addition to two wives and a primary partner. In all, Picasso sired four children by three women. Despite these complex relationships and at a time when Olga was ‘difficult, demanding, even increasing unstable at times’, Picasso in his mid-forties was “desperate for an outlet, an escape into a sexual adventure that would rejuvenate his life and, as or even more importantly, stimulate his art. The beautiful and acquiescently sensual Marie-Thérèse filled both these needs to perfection,” says his biographer. And yet he didn’t marry her and carried on torrid love affairs with even younger women. At about that time, in the Boisgeloup studio, Picasso worked on some of his finest still-life compositions — newly-cut wildflowers in glass pitcher, fruit grouped nearby, all laid out on a cloth-covered table-top and set before an open window. The same subjects were again essayed in ‘geometrically compartmentalised cubist space’. Experts opine that these canvases welcomed the rebirth of nature, and heralded the awakening of an excited and newly receptive state-of-mind. It was a time too when the residents of Boisgeloup threw open windows, “to let in the light of the lengthening days, to breathe in the freshly scented air and allow it to clear out the stuffy and smoky air from the large rooms of this old mansion.” “The presence that hovers everywhere in this light-filled room is that of Marie-Thérèse Walter,” says FitzGerald. In his work, Picasso depicted Marie-Thérèse's shapely and inviting figure in several ways: Seated with a vase of flowers, as a wild beauty, a sporty and healthy ‘beautiful plant’, as the first femme-fleur, on a divan among floral motifs. They are best represented in the series of stunning paintings and sculptures such as ‘Woman in the Garden’ (1929), ‘Girl Before a Mirror’ (1932), ‘Le Reve’ or ‘The Dream’ (1932), ‘Nude, Green Leaves and Bust’ (1932), ‘Nude in a Black Armchair’ (1932) and ‘Woman in Hat and Fur Coat’ (1937). Be that as it may, the simple, sweet-natured girl remained passionately in love with him long after his affairs with other mistresses, says Richardson. On his death she was disconsolate and ended her life. Today the world remembers this warm hearted woman and long time companion as the dominant personality in the ‘Nude, Leaves and Bust’ picture. | |
Collecting the blues
Blues Fest poster collection on display in downtown Hagerstown
Kurt and Peggy Cushwa's collection of posters from the Western Maryland Blues Fest are on display at Washington County Arts Council's gallery in downtown Hagerstown.
The Cushwas' collection of posters from the annual Western Maryland Blues Fest are part of an exhibit on view at the Washington County Arts Council's gallery downtown. Fourteen posters are on display, for Blues Fests from 1996 to 2009. The only poster missing is this year's.
The exhibit's opening reception is from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, June 3. The exhibit continues through Saturday, June 19.
Peggy Cushwa said she and Kurt planned to attend the reception. The original art for this year's Blues Fest poster is on view at the gallery. This year's Blues Fest artist is Nathanael Roney, a Williamsport native who works as an illustrator in Asheville, N.C.
Roney's work will also be exhibited during the show.
Blues Fest is a string of concerts that begins Thursday, June 3, and continues through Sunday, June 6, drawing blues artists to venues in and around downtown Hagerstown.
The Cushwas haven't missed a Blues Fest.
Peggy Cushwa, 59, of Hagerstown, used to own custom frame shop Maggie's Hangups, which sold Blues Fest posters and framed them for others.
"We always framed one extra for ourselves," said Kurt Cushwa, founder of Cushwa & Stouffer Architects in downtown Hagerstown.
But then posters started to accumulate. Peggy Cushwa said they didn't really match the architecture of their home at the time, on Hagerstown's North End. "Which is important if you're married to an architect," said Peggy Cushwa, who is now retired.
So after she displayed the posters in her storefront window, they ended up lining the stairwell of Kurt Cushwa's office.
"I used to collect buildings and now I collect posters," said Kurt Cushwa, 60, joking.
When asked if they had a favorite, Peggy Cushwa said the newest one was always her favorite and that her friends at Howard's Art Supplies & Frames were framing her poster this year.
Kurt Cushwa said he couldn't choose, though the first year's poster stood out because it's narrower than most normal-sized posters.
"From my standpoint, they've always been pieces of art," he said.
If you go ...
WHAT: Opening reception for Kurt Cushwa's Blues Fest poster collection. Work by this year's Blues Fest artist, Nathanael Roney, will also be on display.WHEN: 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, June 3
WHERE: Washington County Arts Council, 14 W. Washington St., downtown Hagerstown
COST: Free admission
Political Street Art: Violence Is The Religion of the Left
There is a lot of street art in my neighborhood, some of political, some not. The running theme overall is a seething self-loathing. In the non-political street art category, some are so obscene that I would be ashamed even taking a photograph of it, much less putting it up on my blog.This above recent example is a curious item of anarcho-hipsterim. No surprise that the left would embrace yet another terrorist. This time it's Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. I'm always suspect of any reference to the World Trade Center in leftist art because it's usually either trooferish or a swipe at America. This one in particular strikes me odd because the Unabomber, who graduated from Harvard, hated modern society and likely all that the World Trade Center represented.
Art as revelation
| For Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, the truth of art was not in substance or logic, but in expression, says Giridhar Khasnis | |
 Dartington Hall Trust was founded by Leonard Elmhirst and his wife, Dorothy Whitney Elmhirst in 1925 near Totnes in South Devon, UK; a thousand acre estate, it was to serve as the base for an experiment in rural reconstruction.Leonard (1893-1974) worked as Rabindranath Tagore’s secretary in India in the early 1920s, travelled the world with him and was deeply influenced by his thoughts. For Tagore, Leonard was a trusted friend and companion. The Nobel laureate is said to have visited Dartington on a number of occasions. In addition to Tagore’s paintings, Dartington possessed a huge archive of his photographs, letters and other ephemera. By the time of writing this article, Sotheby’s London has announced that 12 paintings by Rabindranath Tagore belonging to Dartington Hall Trust would go under the hammer on June 15. According to the Trust, funds raised by the sale would be used to support its ambitious new plans to expand charitable programmes in the arts, social justice and sustainability. All the Tagore’s works coming up for sale are appearing in the market for the first time and are untitled. The pre-sale combined estimate of the dozen paintings is 250,000 350,000 pounds. Except for a couple of landscapes, the set of paintings in watercolour, gouache, coloured ink and pastel on paper comprises portraits of men and women all rendered in Tagore’s inimitable style. Three paintings showing a figure in green background (24 by 18 inch), a figure in yellow (24 by 16 inch) and portrait of a woman (19 by 15 inch) are expected to fetch upto 40,000 pounds each at the Sotheby’s auction. An intriguing portrait of a man with moustache (16 by 10 inch) comes with an estimate of 25,000 to 35,000 GBP, while the landscapes could get upto 20,000 GBP each. Sotheby’s has had a successful track record of selling works by Tagore. A couple of years ago, it sold his ‘Bird’ for 70,000 GBP in London and ‘Head of a Woman’ for 104,500 USD in New York. In May 2008, an auction record for a Tagore’s painting was set when his ‘Death Scene’ from the collection of WG and M Archer was sold for 144,550 pounds. Coming on the heels of the Sotheby’s announcement is a demand by the West Bengal government to stop the auction of Tagore’s paintings and bring back the works to India. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is reported to have assured that his government would examine the proposal. Breath of fresh air When Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, ventured into the world of painting he was already 67 years old. Painting became an obsession with him and by the time he breathed his last at the age of 80, more than 2000 paintings had been produced. Tagore’s first exhibition in India was held in Kolkata in 1931. This was preceded by his first public and international exhibition of paintings in May 1930 at the Gallerie Pigalle in Paris. The Paris show was followed by exhibitions in other countries, including England, Denmark and Sweden the same year. The response to his paintings was overwhelming particularly in France, Germany and Russia. In Germany — where they were shown in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, and Stuttgart — the large pack of viewers included the German President and the Nobel prize winning physicist, Albert Einstein. “It is not surprising that the qualities of nave symbolism and graphic subtlety in Tagore’s paintings should have impressed Western critics, especially at a time when a great number of European painters were exploring possibilities in this direction,” writes artist-scholar K G Subramanyan (Moving Focus: Essays on Indian Art / Seagull Books). That it came from India and in the works of a non-professional painter should have taken them by surprise. Also these paintings had certain qualities of freshness and feeling that most Indian paintings of that time lacked. Tagore’s paintings came to be recognised for their mature views, creative impulses and resolute symbolism. While his landscapes uncovered a dark, haunting and mysterious world, his portraits with pensive faces, soulful eyes and intensely lit profiles highlighted a sense of eerie silence and excruciating loneliness. Historians have observed with awe how the artist transformed his lack of formal training of art into an advantage and opened new horizons in the use of line and colour. Writers like William Archer who found parallels in the approaches of Tagore and Swiss/German artist Paul Klee (1879 1940) also saw a robust sexual symbolism in his painting. As he painted more and more, Tagore developed a new stylistic and sophisticated approach which according to some critics, took away some of the nave decorative power of his earlier works. Nevertheless, the importance of Tagore’s painting and its revitalising impact on subsequent developments in modern Indian art came to be well recognised. “Set beside most of the modern Indian painting of his time his work is like a breath of fresh air,” writes Subramanyan. “At a time when inordinate stylistic preoccupations were choking the creative nuclei of works of art, his work which ignored these and put faith in the promptings of the unconscious came as a refreshing difference. It also came as a proper corrective against overweening nationalistic proclivities in the field of art. The unorthodox ways in which he realised his paintings opened up new vistas to younger artists. His disregard for literary content and his treatment of a painting as a composite image also contributed to a radical change in the general outlook of art. These are not small contributions. They are basic and far-reaching.” On his part, Tagore believed that in art, man revealed himself, not the object. For him, the truth of art was not in substance or logic, but in expression. The picture of a flower in a botanical book is information; its mission ends with our knowledge. But in pure art it is a personal communication. And therefore until it finds its harmony in the depth of our personality it misses the mark. | |
Rare Glimpses of a Pioneer of Performance Art
DIVERSITYAmong the more than 75 works by Carolee Schneemann on display are “War Mop” (1983), center.
“Hand/Heart for Ana Mendieta” (1986), by Carolee Schneemann.
But there is more to Ms. Schneemann, now 70, than provocative performance art, as is clearly revealed in this exhibition, organized by Brian Wallace, the Dorsky Museum’s curator. On hand are more than 75 works of art spanning 40 years, including paintings, drawings, photographs, installations, sculptures, video projections, films and writings, all explained in a scholarly and informative catalog.
Arranged more or less chronologically, the show begins with the artist’s little-known paintings from the 1950s and ’60s, expressive abstracts in the vein of Robert Rauschenberg, Arshile Gorky and Chaim Soutine. Much of this work has never been shown publicly.
The presence of the paintings is probably enough to warrant a visit to the show — who knew one of the pioneers of performance and conceptual art was a talented abstract painter? (Though it makes sense, given that she was knocking about New York in the early 1960s; she admired Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and for a period even painted a bit like them.)
Several of Ms. Schneemann’s untitled colored pencil drawings of figures and landscapes from the 1960s are gems. They are sensual, fluid and dynamic, sometimes incorporating collage elements, as in “Untitled” (1960), in which hair has been stuck onto the composition as a formal element. For me, this is among the most interesting and original works in the exhibition.
Painting and drawing also informed Ms. Schneemann’s early experiments in sculpture and performance. Take “Up to and Including Her Limits” (1973 to 1976), in which the artist used her naked body, suspended in a harness with crayon in hand or between toes, to doodle on giant paper sheets while swinging to and fro. (Parents beware: This exhibition includes video and photographic documentation of this and other works that contain nudity, including “Interior Scroll” (1975), the artist’s most controversial performance, in which she read a feminist speech off a scroll extracted from her vagina.)
Ms. Schneemann is often referred to as a feminist artist, and indeed a lot of her work deals with women’s issues and the female body. But one of this show’s great revelations is that her subject matter is far more diverse than is often assumed. There are works here dealing with topics including animal cruelty, the Vietnam War and the Sept. 11 attacks.
The strongest are the antiwar protest artworks from the 1960s. Notable among them is her 11-minute 1965 film “Viet-Flakes,” a record of war and its atrocities made up of graphic images from the Vietnam War compiled over five years from magazines and newspapers.
The politics of Ms. Schneemann’s work aren’t subtle, nor are they its only focus; some of the pieces in this show are, instead, extremely personal. “Kitch’s Last Meal” (1973 to 1978/2007), a double-screen projection inspired by the death of a favorite cat, includes intimate details of the artist’s life, while “Jim’s Lungs” (1989), a diptych incorporating drawing, photography and collage, was created in response to news of a friend’s lung cancer diagnosis.
Taken together, the diversity in both form and content so well illustrated in this exhibition form an impressive package, from which Ms. Schneemann emerges as a good deal more than just another programmatic conceptual artist using shock tactics to justify dry ideas.
Expect quick sellout at art sale
Butterfly and flies over oil spill water, a photograph by Houston artist Allison Hunter, is one of the works for sale in the AMG Visual Stimulus Package.While politicians and economists debate the efficacy of last year's $787 billion stimulus package and whether another round is needed, a handful of entrepreneurial Houstonians are taking decisive action to get money trickling into Texas artists' coffers.
Their market-based strategy: selling works by big-name artists at small-time prices — $50 or $100 apiece — during a one-night-only shopping spree.
Presented by Apama Mackey Gallery and Keep Houston Rich, a website that posts daily videos celebrating the city, the AMG Visual Stimulus Package is back for its second year and follows the same format.
Collectors looking to score pieces by emerging and established Houston-, San Antonio- and Austin-area artists have from 11 a.m. to 5:59 p.m. today to peruse Mackey's one-day group exhibition.
At 6 p.m. sharp, a two-hour first-come-first-served buying frenzy will ensue.
And there will be a frenzy, if last year's experience is any indication.
“We ran out of wine within an hour,” Mackey says. “I kept sending people to the store. It got to the point where I was like, ‘OK, next year I'll have to get a keg.' ”
(She did. This year, Southern Star Brewery of Conroe is sponsoring the event.)
Among the artists contributing work in all kinds of media are Sharon Kopriva, Allison Hunter, Soody Sharifi, Jahjehan Bath Ives and Kyle Olson, a San Antonio-based artist Mackey discovered last year through the first stimulus show.
Despite last year's stampede and the inevitable disappointments that ensued when more than one buyer wanted the same artwork, nobody left too disappointed, Mackey says.
“Everybody got something that they were really happy with, and that's the nice thing,” she says. “You pay so much less, and you get something awesome. All in all, it was a hit.”
A new executive director for the San Diego Museum of Art
Velásquez, who will assume her new duties in the fall, is the director of the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and previously served as director for two of the city's other national museums, the Museo Nacional de San Carlos and the Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL).
She succeeds Derrick R. Cartwright, who left to become executive director of the Seattle Art Museum last fall.
Velásquez, 43, will be the first female executive director in the San Diego museum's 84-year history.
She was born in Chicago and raised in Mexico and joined the San Carlos in 1990, serving as chief curator of the European art collection before being appointed museum director in 1997.
Seven years later, she became director of the MUNAL, the largest national museum devoted to Mexican art, and joined the Palacio in 2007. During her tenure at the national museums, Velásquez organized a number of international exhibitions including shows on Rubens, Goya and the Frida Kahlo centennial.
In a phone conversation with Culture Monster, Velásquez -- who was in San Diego for the announcement -- expressed her interest in "reaching out, networking, co-producing with different countries and creating dialogues in several senses" when it comes to exhibitions, publications and scholarship.
Given San Diego's proximity to the border, will that "reaching out" extend to Mexico?
"The border is very close," she said, "but something great with art it is that it avoids borders. [My background] will be an asset to the museum, and those relationships will help, but it goes beyond that. I think the museum is an internationally known place and needs to be known even better. I'm interested in moving further not only in Mexico but with the rest of my colleagues in the United States and beyond."
One problem for museums everywhere has been the rocky economy. The San Diego Museum of Art has had to make several cutbacks, including a round of layoffs in February 2009.
"The financial situation is stable," Velásquez said. "The board has been very careful and taken steps to keep things in control."
In terms of other concerns or goals -- for instance, ways to increase the annual attendance of 350,000 -- Velásquez says she has "a lot of ideas, and I will definitely have a lot to say."
But, she adds, "all of that will have to wait until I come back in the fall."
New York gallery owner Leo Castelli (left) in 1966 with Jasper Johns, one of the American contemporary artists he discovered and promoted
From the mid-1950s until his death in 1999, Leo Castelli, the renowned New York gallery owner who discovered and promoted such artists as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roy Lichtenstein, exerted a profound and transformative influence on the aesthetic tastes and commercial practices of the contemporary art world. A beneficiary and instigator of American art’s postwar emergence on the international stage, this Italian-born impresario is generally acknowledged to have been the most important art dealer of the late 20th century.
It is therefore surprising that one can follow Castelli’s story for the first 230 pages of “Leo and His Circle,’’ a mammoth new biography by the French critic and historian Annie Cohen-Solal, without even reaching the point at which the man opens his gallery. But while Cohen-Solal, author of a well-regarded life of existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, lavishes more attention on Castelli’s early, preprofessional period than other writers might, she reaps abundant rewards in the process.
Cohen-Solal expands Castelli’s life story into one of sufficient historical and cultural resonance to interest not just art lovers but a general audience as well, offering a richly detailed account of Castelli’s upbringing as a well-to-do Jewish lad in the Italian city of Trieste; unearthing his family’s multigenerational history as merchants and traders with business connections throughout Europe; and narrating in often mesmerizing prose the tragic rise of fascism, which would result both in Castelli’s hasty relocation to the United States at the outbreak of World War II and in the heartrending death of his parents on the run from the Nazis.
The primary flaw in this ambitious and, in many ways, very impressive book is that the great promise of its first half is not altogether fulfilled in the second. Once Castelli arrives in the United States and embarks on his art-world career, Cohen-Solal follows up only haphazardly on many of the themes developed earlier, particularly the central question of how a European Jewish identity — something Castelli and his family alternately cherished and obscured — may have shaped the dealer’s character, personality, and aspirations.
Although this topic could probably have furnished a rich vein of inquiry in discussing Castelli’s personal interactions in New York, Cohen-Solal does not investigate that city’s elaborate social pecking order, either Jewish or non-Jewish, with anything like the depth, insight, or subtlety that she brought to her discussion of the European situation. Content to invoke the vague concept of “Jewish atavism’’ to explain the sudden emergence of Castelli, the erstwhile aimless playboy, as the planet’s foremost merchant of art, Cohen-Solal then proceeds with a fairly narrow account of the personalities and events that shaped the New York art scene, mostly disregarding the larger historical and intellectual questions that made the first half of the book so interesting. Although Cohen-Solal does bring some new anecdotes to this inside-the-art-world discussion, she has little of importance to add in this particular context to what has already been said quite well by other writers, such as Calvin Tomkins.
Still, overall, her extensive archival research and original interviews with Castelli’s friends and relatives allow Cohen-Solal to present a wide-ranging discussion with many compelling observations about what made the dealer tick. He was “a figure happily abounding in European idiosyncrasies while becoming a sort of exemplary postwar American,’’ she rightly notes. Today, one can see the enduring legacy of that synthesis on display in any contemporary art museum or gallery, anywhere in the world.
From the mid-1950s until his death in 1999, Leo Castelli, the renowned New York gallery owner who discovered and promoted such artists as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roy Lichtenstein, exerted a profound and transformative influence on the aesthetic tastes and commercial practices of the contemporary art world. A beneficiary and instigator of American art’s postwar emergence on the international stage, this Italian-born impresario is generally acknowledged to have been the most important art dealer of the late 20th century.It is therefore surprising that one can follow Castelli’s story for the first 230 pages of “Leo and His Circle,’’ a mammoth new biography by the French critic and historian Annie Cohen-Solal, without even reaching the point at which the man opens his gallery. But while Cohen-Solal, author of a well-regarded life of existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, lavishes more attention on Castelli’s early, preprofessional period than other writers might, she reaps abundant rewards in the process.
Cohen-Solal expands Castelli’s life story into one of sufficient historical and cultural resonance to interest not just art lovers but a general audience as well, offering a richly detailed account of Castelli’s upbringing as a well-to-do Jewish lad in the Italian city of Trieste; unearthing his family’s multigenerational history as merchants and traders with business connections throughout Europe; and narrating in often mesmerizing prose the tragic rise of fascism, which would result both in Castelli’s hasty relocation to the United States at the outbreak of World War II and in the heartrending death of his parents on the run from the Nazis.
The primary flaw in this ambitious and, in many ways, very impressive book is that the great promise of its first half is not altogether fulfilled in the second. Once Castelli arrives in the United States and embarks on his art-world career, Cohen-Solal follows up only haphazardly on many of the themes developed earlier, particularly the central question of how a European Jewish identity — something Castelli and his family alternately cherished and obscured — may have shaped the dealer’s character, personality, and aspirations.
Although this topic could probably have furnished a rich vein of inquiry in discussing Castelli’s personal interactions in New York, Cohen-Solal does not investigate that city’s elaborate social pecking order, either Jewish or non-Jewish, with anything like the depth, insight, or subtlety that she brought to her discussion of the European situation. Content to invoke the vague concept of “Jewish atavism’’ to explain the sudden emergence of Castelli, the erstwhile aimless playboy, as the planet’s foremost merchant of art, Cohen-Solal then proceeds with a fairly narrow account of the personalities and events that shaped the New York art scene, mostly disregarding the larger historical and intellectual questions that made the first half of the book so interesting. Although Cohen-Solal does bring some new anecdotes to this inside-the-art-world discussion, she has little of importance to add in this particular context to what has already been said quite well by other writers, such as Calvin Tomkins.
Still, overall, her extensive archival research and original interviews with Castelli’s friends and relatives allow Cohen-Solal to present a wide-ranging discussion with many compelling observations about what made the dealer tick. He was “a figure happily abounding in European idiosyncrasies while becoming a sort of exemplary postwar American,’’ she rightly notes. Today, one can see the enduring legacy of that synthesis on display in any contemporary art museum or gallery, anywhere in the world.
Rembrandt’s art was a science, study finds
Paintings from the old master show advanced optical techniques to direct viewer’s gazePembrandt, perhaps the greatest Dutch painter of all time, was no slouch in the science department either, a new University of British Columbia study suggests. He pioneered scientific techniques – at least intuitively – to create magic: guiding the viewer’s gaze around a painting, and making them linger longer.
Researcher Steve DiPaola, who is also affiliated with Simon Fraser University, explains that Rembrandt captured the viewer’s attention by placing a sharper focus on a specific area – the left eye in the case of Self Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar – and he blurred edges to draw the viewer in (here, to the face).
For the study, published in the MIT arts and sciences journal Leonardo, Mr. DiPaola duplicated four Rembrandt portraits using models who dressed and posed like the subjects (such as Mr. DiPaola himself, here). The photos were rendered in the style of Rembrandt, closely matching all attributes. Then the photos were manipulated, changing certain details.
The study found that the Rembrandt-like portraits were the most successful: Eye-tracking determined that viewers fixated on the area in sharper focus more quickly and stayed longer, resulting in “calmer eye movements,” says Mr. DiPaola. And when participants were asked which work they preferred, the Rembrandt-like portraits came out on top.
The idea that artists use painting techniques to guide a viewer’s gaze is not new, but until now, the efficacy has not been scientifically proven. Nor has the practice been traced as far back as Rembrandt, who died in 1669.
Researcher Steve DiPaola, who is also affiliated with Simon Fraser University, explains that Rembrandt captured the viewer’s attention by placing a sharper focus on a specific area – the left eye in the case of Self Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar – and he blurred edges to draw the viewer in (here, to the face).
The study found that the Rembrandt-like portraits were the most successful: Eye-tracking determined that viewers fixated on the area in sharper focus more quickly and stayed longer, resulting in “calmer eye movements,” says Mr. DiPaola. And when participants were asked which work they preferred, the Rembrandt-like portraits came out on top.
The idea that artists use painting techniques to guide a viewer’s gaze is not new, but until now, the efficacy has not been scientifically proven. Nor has the practice been traced as far back as Rembrandt, who died in 1669.
Exhibition to revisit contemporary Korean art
 "The Costume of a Painter" by Bae Joon-sung will be on display at ``The Korean Eye: Fantastic Ordinary'' in July at the Saatchi Gallery in London. / Courtesy of Korean Eye |
Korea's largest overseas contemporary art exhibition returns to London in July, but this time geared with new tactics ― the first comprehensive English-language book on contemporary art from the country and a fresh army of young artists."Korean Eye: Fantastic Ordinary," organized by Standard Chartered and Britain's influential Saatchi Gallery, returns for its second year, after its debut show in 2009 drew crowds of 250,000 in London. This year's exhibition will showcase 12 artists, including the 2009 JoongAng Fine Art Prize Winner Jeong Chae-gang and Perrier Jouet nominated artist Lee Rim.
"A refreshing and arresting selection of works serve as an interesting introduction, not only to Korean contemporary art, but to the general Korean culture and the country," said Nigel Hurst, director of the hosting Saatchi Gallery, at a press conference in Seoul last week.
From sculptures made of melted-down tires by Ji Yong-ho and multi-layered portraitures of Marilyn Monroe and others by Kim Dong-yoo, the complex range of selected artists challenge previous conventions associated with Korean art in the outside world.
Though the pieces may appear to deal with "mundane, day-to-day issues," Hurst said, each of the works confronts the topic in a "quite fantastic fashion."
Other notable pieces are by Jeon Joon-ho, who turns bank notes into hyper-realist art by adding impossible elements. On the back of a $20 bill, the figure of the artist himself can be seen washing the windows of the iconic White House in Washington D.C. Bae Joon-sung looks to combine the fantastical with the real by reinterpreting traditional Victorian-era settings with subtle, belying changes in the canvas.
The artists ― narrowed down from 100 ― were chosen by a board of six curators, including the art specialist Rodman Primack, director of Hanart TZ Gallery Tsong-zung Chang and the art consultant Amelie von Wedel.
"The selected work promises to present an extraordinary exhibition," Hurst said. "But the feeling remains that we're only really scratching the surface in terms of Korean art."
Publishing house SKIRA will release the first English-language "Korean Eye: Contemporary Korean Art" in conjunction with the exhibition. The 400-page comprehensive book features 75 artists with a self-introduction, most of them translated from Korean.
Six features were contributed from art critics and organizers of the show, with essays from editor and Royal College of Art Honorary Fellow Serenella Ciclitira and art historian Lee Ji-yoon _ both members of the curatorial board. The internationally known Youngna Kim, a professor at Seoul National University and published art critic, also contributed a piece.
"It's impossible to really know much about Korean contemporary art," said David Ciclitira, founder of Korean Eye and chairman of the Parallel Media Group. "So [the book] is to show as much diversity as possible."
Although the book will be released on July 5 at the London gallery, it will be available for public sale from October. The book will be sold by Internet shopping giant Amazon.com ($40.95).
Focus on sales has been downplayed this year however, as last year's organizing partner Phillips de Pury & Co. will not be present. The major auction house and dealer managed to sell several works in 2009, but this year's show will maintain a not-for-sale status.
"Korean Eye: Fantastic Ordinary" will be presented from July 3 to July 18 at the Saatchi Gallery, before moving to a venue in Singapore for two-and-a-half weeks in late September. The show will make its way to Korea by Nov. 1, in time for the G-20 Summit in Seoul. For more information visit www.koreaneye.org.
Art on paper is back with a bang
For nearly three decades, art paper had been pushed to the background with the arrival of canvas. But the medium has evolved in seclusion over the years because of a small group of loyalists.
Twenty Indian veteran artists are showing more than 40 compositions at Gallery Ensign in an exhibition here titled, 'It's Now on Paper'. The works cover genres like water colours, charcoal etchings, pencil drawings, ink etchings and drawings in gold and crayons.
The drawings are diverse. Masters of the 1960s and 1970s like Jogen Chowdhury, A. Ramachandran, Sanat Kar, K.G. Subramanyam, Chameli Ramachandran, Jyoti Bhatt and Sakti Burman's compositions have been influenced by nature.
The relatively younger artists like Arpana Caur, C. Jagdish and K.R. Subanna have blended human forms and nature in delicate compositions, almost surreal in treatment, on a variety of paper.
'Every artist scribbles on paper before painting. Hence paper work forms the vary basis of art,' artist K.R. Subanna, who works on Nepali rice paper procured from Assam, told IANS.
'Artists like K.G. Subramanyam still work on paper on a regular basis. Paper art finds few takers as the majority of buyers still prefer the heavier canvas art.'
Among other prominent artists displaying at the exhibition are Thota Vaikuntam, Laxma Goud, Sunil Das, Gogi Saroj Pal, Ved Nayar, Rabin Mandal, S.G. Vasudev, R.B. Bhaskaran, Surya Prakash and P. Khemraj.
Seema Subanna, director of Gallery Ensign, said 'paper works were more spontaneous, almost like the signature of the artist.'
'Lines on paper have more fluidity and paper art is much cheaper than canvas. They are also portable,' she told IANS. The paper works at her gallery are priced Rs.45,000 and upwards, at least three times less than a canvas by the same artist.
Art paper is now available in special acid-free surfaces and digital hi-tech finish to lend works longer shelf life and greater clarity.
Watercolour paper has an interesting history. It was made around the time Ts'ai Lun patented papermaking in China in 105 AD.
Western watercolour paper, as we know it today, was developed in the second half of the 18th century. James Whatman paved the way for the development of watercolour paper when under commission in the late 1750s, he replaced the traditional coarse laid wire screen of papermaking mould with a wire screen so fine that it was called 'wire cloth'.
This facilitated an even formation of pulp fibres without any textural impressions left on the surface of the newly-formed paper.
Whatman made paper available in three finishes - 'hot press', 'not (cold press)' and 'rough'. He has been credited with the adaptation of the 'hard-size (alum-gelatin) for use in watercolour paper.
Whatman, Saunders and Strathmore papers, as well as Fabriano and the Royal Watercolour Society Paper, are still among the world's finest.
The exhibition that began May 27 will close July 10.
Twenty Indian veteran artists are showing more than 40 compositions at Gallery Ensign in an exhibition here titled, 'It's Now on Paper'. The works cover genres like water colours, charcoal etchings, pencil drawings, ink etchings and drawings in gold and crayons.
The drawings are diverse. Masters of the 1960s and 1970s like Jogen Chowdhury, A. Ramachandran, Sanat Kar, K.G. Subramanyam, Chameli Ramachandran, Jyoti Bhatt and Sakti Burman's compositions have been influenced by nature.
The relatively younger artists like Arpana Caur, C. Jagdish and K.R. Subanna have blended human forms and nature in delicate compositions, almost surreal in treatment, on a variety of paper.
'Every artist scribbles on paper before painting. Hence paper work forms the vary basis of art,' artist K.R. Subanna, who works on Nepali rice paper procured from Assam, told IANS.
'Artists like K.G. Subramanyam still work on paper on a regular basis. Paper art finds few takers as the majority of buyers still prefer the heavier canvas art.'
Among other prominent artists displaying at the exhibition are Thota Vaikuntam, Laxma Goud, Sunil Das, Gogi Saroj Pal, Ved Nayar, Rabin Mandal, S.G. Vasudev, R.B. Bhaskaran, Surya Prakash and P. Khemraj.
Seema Subanna, director of Gallery Ensign, said 'paper works were more spontaneous, almost like the signature of the artist.'
'Lines on paper have more fluidity and paper art is much cheaper than canvas. They are also portable,' she told IANS. The paper works at her gallery are priced Rs.45,000 and upwards, at least three times less than a canvas by the same artist.
Art paper is now available in special acid-free surfaces and digital hi-tech finish to lend works longer shelf life and greater clarity.
Watercolour paper has an interesting history. It was made around the time Ts'ai Lun patented papermaking in China in 105 AD.
Western watercolour paper, as we know it today, was developed in the second half of the 18th century. James Whatman paved the way for the development of watercolour paper when under commission in the late 1750s, he replaced the traditional coarse laid wire screen of papermaking mould with a wire screen so fine that it was called 'wire cloth'.
This facilitated an even formation of pulp fibres without any textural impressions left on the surface of the newly-formed paper.
Whatman made paper available in three finishes - 'hot press', 'not (cold press)' and 'rough'. He has been credited with the adaptation of the 'hard-size (alum-gelatin) for use in watercolour paper.
Whatman, Saunders and Strathmore papers, as well as Fabriano and the Royal Watercolour Society Paper, are still among the world's finest.
The exhibition that began May 27 will close July 10.
Malaysians Must Value Culture And Art Of Other Races - Rais
PETALING JAYA, May 30 (Bernama) -- Information Communication and culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim wants Malaysians to start appreciating the art and culture of other races.
He said the time has come for people with creativity to venture deeply into the art and culture sector in the concept of 1Malaysia.
"I would like to see the unification of various people from various races into one entity," he told reporters after attending the "Soorya India" festival here Saturday.
He added that he welcomed the efforts by the organiser of the "Soorya India" festival to proliferate and enrich the Indian art and culture to the locals.
"Their efforts indeed help enrich the local art scene and components within our multiracial society," he said.
The "Soorya India" festival, organised by Sopaanam Arts to collect funds for the Tun Hussien Onn Eye Hospital, featured 25 performers from India who presented various musical, songs and dances.
He said the time has come for people with creativity to venture deeply into the art and culture sector in the concept of 1Malaysia.
"I would like to see the unification of various people from various races into one entity," he told reporters after attending the "Soorya India" festival here Saturday.
He added that he welcomed the efforts by the organiser of the "Soorya India" festival to proliferate and enrich the Indian art and culture to the locals.
"Their efforts indeed help enrich the local art scene and components within our multiracial society," he said.
The "Soorya India" festival, organised by Sopaanam Arts to collect funds for the Tun Hussien Onn Eye Hospital, featured 25 performers from India who presented various musical, songs and dances.
Lawren Harris rules Canada's art auction landscape
James Wilson Morrice's On the Beach, Dinard.In 1916, two friends and artists from Ontario, both in their thirties, stood roughly shoulder to shoulder in their accomplishments as both worked to combine the new European way of painting and their native landscape into a uniquely Canadian body of art.
The stream of history would soon carry the men off in dramatically different directions. The solitary Tom Thomson died under mysterious circumstances on a canoe trip in 1917. Among Canadian artists, the romantic figure has arguably commanded the public's imagination ever since. Yet it is the relatively long-lived and hard-working Lawren Harris, the Thomas Edison to Thomson's John Ruskin, who has captured the chequebooks of the nation's art collectors.
Harris has racked up by far the highest total all-time sales in the country's auction houses: $71.5-million to Thomson's $34.3-million.
Harris pulled further away from Thomson -- and the rest of Canada's art elite -- this week. The figures above come from Heffel Fine Art Auction House's database of auction records, which do not yet include the results of the company's major Canadian art sale at the Vancouver Convention Centre on Wednesday evening. There, a Harris painting, Bylot Island I, sold for $2.8-million (all figures include buyer's premium, 17% in this instance).
More Harrises defied the estimates and any lingering effects of the recession: Arctic Sketch IX went for triple its estimate, selling for $1.52-million. Another small oil-onboard sketch, titled Winter, sold for $731,250, smashing the estimate of $300,000 to $500,000.
Island Lake Superior went for $585,000. Another Harris painting, Mountain Sketch LXX, sold for $497,250. (Works from Harris's latter abstract period sold more modestly, as usual.)
"We had record amounts of telephone bidding, and a packed ballroom with about 400 people," said David Heffel, president of the auction house, describing Wednesday's Harris-mania. "The phones were just a-chatterbox; it was just a chicken coop. It was quite something to see."
David Silcox, president of Sotheby's Canada and author of 2006's The Group of Seven and
Tom Thomson, said the market's apparently insatiable appetite for Harris is no bubble: It is based on the fundamental quality of the late man's work.
"Of all the members of the Group of Seven ... Lawren Harris painted more very successful paintings as a percentage
of his total output. "He simply hit more home runs than anyone
else," Mr. Silcox said.
Sotheby's upcoming June 2 sale in Toronto includes works by Thomson and Harris.
"His work is very commanding," said Dennis Reid, chief curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario and author of a 2002 book on Tom Thomson. "You walk into a room and there's a great Lawren Harris on the wall, boy, you notice it."
"There is a kind of an elegant
abstraction to his treatment of the landscape," said Ian Thom, senior curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery. "The work has, at its best, a classicism and serenity to it that a lot of people find appealing."
For his part, Thomson has a unique place in Canada's visual sense of itself, Mr. Thom continued. "For Thomson there are two absolutely iconic paintings. The Jack Pine and The West Wind are engraved in a large part of the Canadian psyche."
Regarding sales results, comparing Thomson and Harris is an unfair exercise, Mr. Reid said. The men lived different lifespans and displayed somewhat different work ethic. Harris was blessed with a relatively long life, and produced far more works in his lifetime. In 1885, Lawren Stewart Harris was born into a Brantford family that was comfortable thanks to its success in manufacturing mechanized farm equipment.
He died in 1970 at 84, a Companion of the Order of Canada.
His ill-fated friend Tom Thomson, often portrayed as brooding, moody and solitary, died on a canoe trip in 1917 at the age of 39, before the Group of Seven painters' founding in 1919.Whether he was murdered over a loan, committed suicide over his fear of marriage or just bumped his head and drowned is matter for conjecture.
Thomson completed 40 full-sized canvases in his lifetime. Most of the works that come up for sale are small sketches on board. Meanwhile, Harris was capable of completing 40 finished canvases in a single year.
The odd time a good Thomson comes up for auction it gives high-rolling bidders' paddles a jolt. At a Heffel auction last November, a Tom Thomson, Early Spring, Canoe Lake, sold for $2.75-million, blasting into shards the pre-sale upper estimate of $800,000.However, for the most part, the supply of Thomsons has all but dried up.
The same thing will happen to the supply of Harrises, Mr. Heffel said. "I predict in five or 10 years, we just won't see major Harrises. It will be a very, very rare occurrence -- maybe once every 10 years."
Once both artists are in the history books and only rarely in auction catalogues, Thomson could spring back to the forefront.
Harris's long life reads like the proverb about slow and steady winning the race: from privilege as a boy to bankrolling the Group of Seven to serving as a de facto dean of Canadian art in later life; working steadily all the while. Next to Thomson's story, it lacks glamour.
"People always respond, for a variety of reasons, to mystery and drama," Mr. Thom said, "and Lawren Harris's life doesn't have a lot of mystery and drama to it."
Gallery paints a bleak picture for arts-minded youths
Heather Crysdale writes that she's concerned about the impact of National Gallery of Canada cuts on Ottawa-area teenagers like her two sons, including Malcolm, left.
Re: Union says gallery is axing programs, May 16.
I am very concerned about the impact of these cuts at the National Gallery of Canada on arts-minded teenagers in the Ottawa area.
Cancelled gallery programs such as the Teen Council, and the monthly Off-the-Wall art workshops, provided programming that invited teens into the gallery and the studio and brought the National Gallery and its works of art to life.
My son, Malcolm Abraham, 16, was an active participant on the Teen Council. Council members met monthly and set up workshops with local artists, specializing in a variety of art forms -- abstract art, silk screen printing and Munny designing. What a terrific experience for teens interested in a career in the arts.
Malcolm contacted Colin Betts, a local Munny (blank vinyl figurine) designer. He chose abstract art paintings from the gallery to present to teens at the workshop. Each participant then designed a Munny based on a work at the gallery. Malcolm based his Munny design on the Voice of Fire. What a great way to bring art alive for local teenagers.
My younger son, Rowan Abraham, 13, attended the Off-the-Wall workshops on a regular basis, too. I'm wondering if my boys will still enjoy going to the gallery as much as they have, after the cuts.
The proposed direction to "serve a wider audience" includes setting up a self-directed tour for teenagers, and putting art ideas for teens on the gallery website. These initiatives may have their place in promoting the arts, but their appeal to teens would seem limited to me.
How keen is an average teen going to be to tour the collections independently, with a brochure in hand? How likely are they to look up an art activity on the National Gallery's website, and replicate it at home?
It's time for the National Gallery of Canada to rethink its direction for our local youth.
I know we will be reconsidering whether or not to renew our family membership next year.
Two women reshape Hong Kong’s art scene
Hong Kong’s ascent into the premier league of art centres is gathering pace with rumours that the buyer of the record-breaking $106.5m Picasso “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust” (1932) hails from the Chinese metropolis.
Auction house sales there have also smashed records: Sotheby’s sold almost HK$2bn (£179m) of paintings and antiques at its six-day auction in April. The buoyant commercial gallery scene has been bolstered by dealer Larry Gagosian’s decision to open a permanent space in the city. But outside these powerhouses, a duo of Chinese women is shaping Hong Kong’s art scene through innovative, artist-led initiatives that dovetail with the region’s mega-bucks art ventures.
Elaine Ng is 36, Claire Hsu is 33. Ng is editor and publisher of Art Asia Pacific, the influential journal dedicated to contemporary art from the Asia Pacific region. Hsu co-founded Asia Art Archive (AAA) in 2000, a public contemporary art resource comprising a library and archive collection of over 22,000 items. The friends have had similar career paths, sharing a mentor in Johnson Chang Tsong-zung, the erudite curator and critic who towers over the Chinese contemporary art scene after founding Hanart TZ gallery in Hong Kong in 1983. Ng, armed with an MA in cultural policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, found herself at Chang’s space in the mid-1990s.
“Crucially, he was one of the first dealers to promote contemporary Chinese art in the 1980s and 1990s, backing big-name artists such as Xu Bing and Zhang Xiaogang before they sold for stratospheric prices in the mid-2000s. He has a great eye.” For Hsu, Chang was equally important, prompting her to set up the AAA when she was still a postgraduate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in the late 1990s. “My professor at SOAS was not impressed when I proposed that my MA dissertation should focus on late 20th-century Chinese contemporary art. There was very little material, or research: Johnson suggested that I set up an archive, so I packed a suitcase and went back to Hong Kong.”
The result, as Hsu describes the AAA, is a “museum without exhibitions. Contemporary and modern art is not widely taught in schools and colleges here and is only really seen in commercial galleries. AAA is proactive in instigating critical thinking and dialogue and forging networks in the region.”
Schemes include an annual international residency which, in 2009, brought the Delhi-based artists RAQS Media Collective to Hong Kong. But the best may be yet to come with the launch this year of a four-year initiative to incorporate into the archive the world’s most important collection of art from 1980s China, including the collections of artists Mao Xuhui, Wu Shanzhuan, Lu Peng and Zhang Xiaogang and curator Fei Dawei. For its booth at ARTHK 10, AAA has recreated an artist’s living-working space of the 1980s.
Ng’s sentiments chime with Hsu’s ideals. Dividing her time between Hong Kong and New York, where Art Asia Pacific is based, she sees her magazine as “a platform for artists that are not commercially viable [and] to encourage critical thinking. I’m on the advisory board of Art HK, which has become a pivotal international event for the region, but the non-commercial scene must also be supported.”
But there is no doubting the business acumen of the two women. Ng, who cut her teeth in the non-profit sector when she managed the film and new media organisation Videotage in Hong Kong in the late 1990s, turned a profit at Art Asia Pacific in 2007 and 2009 after she bought the publication from artist Zhao Gang in 2004.
Hsu seems just as canny, harnessing private capital through initiatives such as a collectors’ circle of about 20 couples.
There’s more. “We recently put together a vision plan for transforming the central police station compound, a heritage site that dates back to the 19th century, into a contemporary visual arts hub,” says Hsu. This project was launched in conjunction with the non-profit gallery, Para/site. And Hsu and Ng are immersed in another key state project, the West Kowloon Cultural District venture, a gargantuan 40-hectare waterfront development described as “an integrated arts, cultural, entertainment and commercial district”, pumped with state cash (an HK$21.6bn endowment). A new museum on the site, called M+, will focus on 20th- and 21st-century visual culture.
Hsu and Ng agree that Hong Kong, which lacks a landmark public contemporary art museum, desperately needs such a flagship institution. But can the city, awash with private art money, sustain a state-backed venue on this scale? Ng says: “I remain positive about its prospects. But museums are not yet part of the mindset here as everything needs to be profitable in the end.”
Auction house sales there have also smashed records: Sotheby’s sold almost HK$2bn (£179m) of paintings and antiques at its six-day auction in April. The buoyant commercial gallery scene has been bolstered by dealer Larry Gagosian’s decision to open a permanent space in the city. But outside these powerhouses, a duo of Chinese women is shaping Hong Kong’s art scene through innovative, artist-led initiatives that dovetail with the region’s mega-bucks art ventures.
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| Claire Hsu |
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| Elaine Ng |
The result, as Hsu describes the AAA, is a “museum without exhibitions. Contemporary and modern art is not widely taught in schools and colleges here and is only really seen in commercial galleries. AAA is proactive in instigating critical thinking and dialogue and forging networks in the region.”
Schemes include an annual international residency which, in 2009, brought the Delhi-based artists RAQS Media Collective to Hong Kong. But the best may be yet to come with the launch this year of a four-year initiative to incorporate into the archive the world’s most important collection of art from 1980s China, including the collections of artists Mao Xuhui, Wu Shanzhuan, Lu Peng and Zhang Xiaogang and curator Fei Dawei. For its booth at ARTHK 10, AAA has recreated an artist’s living-working space of the 1980s.
Ng’s sentiments chime with Hsu’s ideals. Dividing her time between Hong Kong and New York, where Art Asia Pacific is based, she sees her magazine as “a platform for artists that are not commercially viable [and] to encourage critical thinking. I’m on the advisory board of Art HK, which has become a pivotal international event for the region, but the non-commercial scene must also be supported.”
But there is no doubting the business acumen of the two women. Ng, who cut her teeth in the non-profit sector when she managed the film and new media organisation Videotage in Hong Kong in the late 1990s, turned a profit at Art Asia Pacific in 2007 and 2009 after she bought the publication from artist Zhao Gang in 2004.
Hsu seems just as canny, harnessing private capital through initiatives such as a collectors’ circle of about 20 couples.
There’s more. “We recently put together a vision plan for transforming the central police station compound, a heritage site that dates back to the 19th century, into a contemporary visual arts hub,” says Hsu. This project was launched in conjunction with the non-profit gallery, Para/site. And Hsu and Ng are immersed in another key state project, the West Kowloon Cultural District venture, a gargantuan 40-hectare waterfront development described as “an integrated arts, cultural, entertainment and commercial district”, pumped with state cash (an HK$21.6bn endowment). A new museum on the site, called M+, will focus on 20th- and 21st-century visual culture.
Hsu and Ng agree that Hong Kong, which lacks a landmark public contemporary art museum, desperately needs such a flagship institution. But can the city, awash with private art money, sustain a state-backed venue on this scale? Ng says: “I remain positive about its prospects. But museums are not yet part of the mindset here as everything needs to be profitable in the end.”
Art Linkletter's Everyman charm
Art Linkletter, who died Wednesday at the estimable age of 97, had already had a long, long career in broadcasting when he crept into my consciousness as the host of "House Party," a CBS daytime television show that ran from 1952 to 1969 (with a final year on NBC) and most famously featured his interviews with small children. (Even at the age of some of his small-fry guests, I owned a well-thumbed paperback copy of his Charles Schulz-illustrated book, "Kids Say the Darndest Things.") Never talking down to them, or sinking to a grown-up's version of a child-eye's view, he was the master of this very particular form. On television, only Bill Cosby and David Letterman have done it nearly as well.
In a time of rapid social change, Linkletter was a bulwark of old-fashioned amiability and politesse, and it is somehow no surprise to learn that he was Canadian (born Gordon Arthur Kelly in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, in 1912), that his adoptive father was an evangelical preacher, and that he counted Norman Vincent Peale, the author of "The Power of Positive Thinking," as a mentor. But he had an impish streak, as well, which made his niceness alluring and kept his shows, as plain as they were, from ever being boring. (His attitude and approach are maintained today, on a somewhat grander scale, in the daytime shows of Bonnie Hunt and Ellen DeGeneres.) I imagine him going well with a cup of coffee and, in the foolish practice of the times, possibly a cigarette, as somewhere nearby a dryer turns.
Linkletter himself neither smoked nor drank. He was in Hollywood but not of it, a family man - married 74 years - with a passel of kids of his own. One of them, Jack, who died in 2007, also became a TV host and was the original inspiration for the kid interviews, telling his father he wouldn't be going back to kindergarten "because I can't read, I can't write and they won't let me talk." Another, Diane, notoriously jumped to her death from a window, in 1969, at the age of 20, a suicide her father attributed to LSD; it turned Linkletter into an anti-drug crusader, which made him, for a while, a figure of counterculture ridicule.
You have to respect him in the end, however, because his work was itself couched in a democratic respect for and a delight in ordinary humanness. Unlike, say, Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segments, which are meant to make their subjects look stupid, or what we have currently agreed to call "reality television," which seeks to reduce unscripted behavior into trite melodrama, Linkletter's work was rooted in the belief that people are inherently interesting and entertaining: "People Are Funny" was the philosophical title of the stunt-oriented, audience-participation prime-time show he hosted on radio and then television from 1943-61.
One of his gambits there was to inventory the contents of a woman's purse, an exercise that strikes me as much an exploration of human commonality and variety as it was a dodge to get a laugh at a stranger's expense. It may not have been conceived as such, but there's something in that trust in humble detail, that interest in small things, that feels quite radical to me. Television, which more and more reflects the short attention spans it encourages in its viewers, could use a little more of it.
Even after he retired from full-time broadcasting, Linkletter flitted in and out of television, as a pitchman or guest or talking head, a proponent of proactive aging, for which he was a kind of poster oldster. And he briefly returned as a regular contributor to Cosby's late-'90s franchising of the old "House Party" segment, "Kids Say the Darndest Things." Younger viewers must have regarded him, to the extent they noticed him at all, as someone who might have meant something once. And he did, children. His methods were modest, but his vision, I think, ran deep.
In a time of rapid social change, Linkletter was a bulwark of old-fashioned amiability and politesse, and it is somehow no surprise to learn that he was Canadian (born Gordon Arthur Kelly in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, in 1912), that his adoptive father was an evangelical preacher, and that he counted Norman Vincent Peale, the author of "The Power of Positive Thinking," as a mentor. But he had an impish streak, as well, which made his niceness alluring and kept his shows, as plain as they were, from ever being boring. (His attitude and approach are maintained today, on a somewhat grander scale, in the daytime shows of Bonnie Hunt and Ellen DeGeneres.) I imagine him going well with a cup of coffee and, in the foolish practice of the times, possibly a cigarette, as somewhere nearby a dryer turns.
Linkletter himself neither smoked nor drank. He was in Hollywood but not of it, a family man - married 74 years - with a passel of kids of his own. One of them, Jack, who died in 2007, also became a TV host and was the original inspiration for the kid interviews, telling his father he wouldn't be going back to kindergarten "because I can't read, I can't write and they won't let me talk." Another, Diane, notoriously jumped to her death from a window, in 1969, at the age of 20, a suicide her father attributed to LSD; it turned Linkletter into an anti-drug crusader, which made him, for a while, a figure of counterculture ridicule.
You have to respect him in the end, however, because his work was itself couched in a democratic respect for and a delight in ordinary humanness. Unlike, say, Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segments, which are meant to make their subjects look stupid, or what we have currently agreed to call "reality television," which seeks to reduce unscripted behavior into trite melodrama, Linkletter's work was rooted in the belief that people are inherently interesting and entertaining: "People Are Funny" was the philosophical title of the stunt-oriented, audience-participation prime-time show he hosted on radio and then television from 1943-61.
One of his gambits there was to inventory the contents of a woman's purse, an exercise that strikes me as much an exploration of human commonality and variety as it was a dodge to get a laugh at a stranger's expense. It may not have been conceived as such, but there's something in that trust in humble detail, that interest in small things, that feels quite radical to me. Television, which more and more reflects the short attention spans it encourages in its viewers, could use a little more of it.
Even after he retired from full-time broadcasting, Linkletter flitted in and out of television, as a pitchman or guest or talking head, a proponent of proactive aging, for which he was a kind of poster oldster. And he briefly returned as a regular contributor to Cosby's late-'90s franchising of the old "House Party" segment, "Kids Say the Darndest Things." Younger viewers must have regarded him, to the extent they noticed him at all, as someone who might have meant something once. And he did, children. His methods were modest, but his vision, I think, ran deep.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Mongolian Folk Art for UNESCO
UNESCO registered Mongolian traditional arts including national long song, Mongolian Tuuli (epic), morin khuur (horse head fiddle), biyelgee (Mongolian folk dance) and tsuur (bagpipe) and handed a confirmation for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural heritage in National Museum of Mongolia on May 24. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Center of Cultural Heritage; UNESCO National Commission of Mongolia and the National Museum of Mongolia opened jointly an exhibition to be named “Mongolian cultural heritage enrolled World” within the framework of measure to hand a confirmation in the National Museum of Mongolia between May 21 and 23.
There were so many different tsuur, morin khuur, rare photos and portraits of famous Mongolian morin khuur players and readers an epic in the exhibition. Also, there were books and videos about history of Mongolian national long song and biyelgee.
Presented by Bill Hood & Sons Art & Antique Auctions
Major collection of Art & Antiques from Boca Raton Estate selling unreserved. The items have been in the same collection for at least 75 years. Here is just a few of the art pieces illustrated now. See also ad in next weeks edition, 100 antique and contemporary paintings & Prints (see website for full list & images). French Empire couch & 6 chairs, French Empire round Table, 2 Verni Martin cabinets, 19th Cent. French ormolu mounted desk, French Empire Bronze Clock, Early Figural Capodimonte centerpiece, Marble Sculpture, Candelabras, Too much to list, do a friend a favor show them this. Bid through LiveAuctioneers or through hoodauction.com website 400 items will be sold at public auction. Consignments accepted for our Monthly Antique Auctions.
View Full Catalog & Pictures at: www.hoodauction.com Call Chris or Bill Hood for Condition reportsor
Questions. ph. (561) 278-8996 email info@hoodauction.com fax. (561) 278-8977. Absentee & phone bids accepted, also bid live on-line. Au 1082 Ab742
View Full Catalog & Pictures at: www.hoodauction.com Call Chris or Bill Hood for Condition reportsor
Questions. ph. (561) 278-8996 email info@hoodauction.com fax. (561) 278-8977. Absentee & phone bids accepted, also bid live on-line. Au 1082 Ab742
 Paul Cornoyer oc Washington Square 18 x 24 |  Cesare Auguste Detti oil on panel 16 x 12 |
 Paul Signac Watercolor 18 x 10 |  Henriette Ronner-Knip oc 36 x 30 |
‘Custer’s Last Stand’ Art Exhibit Now on Display at Whitney Gallery in Cody, Wyoming
"Brush, Palette, and Custer's Last Stand," featuring artists who depicted the Battle of the Little Bighorn, is now on display at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center's Whitney Gallery of Western Art in Cody, Wyoming.
Assembled from the Center's collection, several paintings, prints, and sketches will be on display for the next two years, offering a glimpse into those fateful days in the summer of 1876.
"Variously called the Battle of Little Bighorn, the Battle of Greasy Grass, Custer's Last Stand, Custer's Last Fight, and several other names depending on cultural and historical perspective, the Battle of the Little Bighorn remains shrouded in mystery," Acting Curator Christine Brindza said.
In 2008, Brindza shared her research in a presentation to the Custer Battlefield Historical Museum Association Symposium in Hardin, Montana.
"Some of these early artists served as historians, whether intentionally or not, revealing details of the battle in their work," she added. "Others merely created a work of art based on imagination. Regardless, as the public saw these early images, their views of the battle were shaped by the artwork, and therefore, helped create myths and legends that resonate even today."
On display near the Frederic Remington Studio in the Whitney Gallery, the exhibit includes works by William de la Montagne Cary (1840 - 1922), John Mulvany (1844 - 1906), Cassilly Adams (1843 - 1921), Edgar S. Paxson (1852 - 1919), Allan Mardon (b. 1931), Earl Biss (1947 - 1998), and Fritz Scholder (1937 - 2005).
Writing in the Summer 2010 issue of Points West, the quarterly publication of the BBHC exclusively for its members, Brindza notes that "Edgar S. Paxson's Custer's Last Stand, finished in 1899, became one of the best-known images of the event, both glorifying the battle and creating a so-called martyred Custer."
Paxson's oil on canvas is 70.5 x 106 inches (just under six feet by nearly nine feet) and is an action-packed depiction of the battle according to the artist's imagination. More than 200 figures are represented, and at least 25 portraits, including yellow-haired Custer.
"The Historical Center has 14 sketches which Paxson used for his mammoth painting Custer's Last Stand which he completed in 1899," Brindza added. "We also have a photograph of Paxson working on this piece and a number of his painting tools like brushes, charcoal holders, and paint boxes."
The Center also has in its collection Mardon's Battle of Greasy Grass, an oil on linen which also is quite large - 76 x 136 inches (just over six feet by about 11 feet).
"In The Battle of Greasy Grass, Mardon included individuals mostly ignored or unheard of in other battle representations," Brindza wrote in Points West. "Though he did paint Custer and other well known people, Mardon incorporated others such as Kate Bighead, a Cheyenne woman who witnessed the battle from a distance."
Mardon's Battle of Greasy Grass was purchased for the museum with funds from the William E. Weiss Memorial Fund, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon H. Barrows, and the Franklin A. West Memorial Fund.
The Paxson and Mardon works are situated across from each other with computer kiosks for more study. Earl Biss's General Custer in Blue and Green, 1996, is nearby.
"Earl Biss (1947 - 1998), artist and member of the Crow nation, focused not on the battle, but on the most well-known individual from the battle, George Armstrong Custer," according to Brindza. "Biss, a renowned abstract expressionist, conveyed emotion through color and line in the portrait General Custer in Blue and Green, 1996, using strengths from both his cultural background and artistic training."
While the Center has many letters and drawings concerning the battle, they have been displayed in a variety of cases in various locations. This new "Brush, Palette, and Custer's Last Stand" exhibit is the first time everything has been brought together in one showing.
Committed to connecting people with the Spirit of the American West, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center weaves the varied threads of the western experience-history and myth, art and Native culture, firearms technology and the nature of Yellowstone-into the rich panorama that is the American West.
The Center, an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, is now operating its summer schedule, open daily, 8 a.m. - 6 p.m. For general information, visit www.bbhc.org , or call (307) 587.4771.
For more information on the Battle of the Little Bighorn, visit the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument's Web site at www.nps.gov/libi/index.htm. The national monument, near Crow Agency, Montana, is the site of the June 25, 1876 battle between the U.S. Army's 7th cavalry and several bands of Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho.
Assembled from the Center's collection, several paintings, prints, and sketches will be on display for the next two years, offering a glimpse into those fateful days in the summer of 1876.
 Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, appearing strong to the end, as painted by Edgar S. Paxson, from his oil painting of 'Custer's Last Stand.' (See below for a view of the entire painting). Edgar S. Paxson (1852 – 1919). ‘Custer’s Last Stand,’ 1899. Oil on canvas, 70.5 x 106 inches. Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming. 19.69 |
In 2008, Brindza shared her research in a presentation to the Custer Battlefield Historical Museum Association Symposium in Hardin, Montana.
"Some of these early artists served as historians, whether intentionally or not, revealing details of the battle in their work," she added. "Others merely created a work of art based on imagination. Regardless, as the public saw these early images, their views of the battle were shaped by the artwork, and therefore, helped create myths and legends that resonate even today."
On display near the Frederic Remington Studio in the Whitney Gallery, the exhibit includes works by William de la Montagne Cary (1840 - 1922), John Mulvany (1844 - 1906), Cassilly Adams (1843 - 1921), Edgar S. Paxson (1852 - 1919), Allan Mardon (b. 1931), Earl Biss (1947 - 1998), and Fritz Scholder (1937 - 2005).
Writing in the Summer 2010 issue of Points West, the quarterly publication of the BBHC exclusively for its members, Brindza notes that "Edgar S. Paxson's Custer's Last Stand, finished in 1899, became one of the best-known images of the event, both glorifying the battle and creating a so-called martyred Custer."
 'Custer's Last Stand,' as painted by Edgar Paxson, is an action-packed depiction of the battle according to the artist’s imagination, containing more than 200 figures. not the least of which is Custer. Edgar S. Paxson (1852 – 1919). ‘Custer’s Last Stand,’ 1899. Oil on canvas, 70.5 x 106 inches. Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming. 19.69 |
"The Historical Center has 14 sketches which Paxson used for his mammoth painting Custer's Last Stand which he completed in 1899," Brindza added. "We also have a photograph of Paxson working on this piece and a number of his painting tools like brushes, charcoal holders, and paint boxes."
The Center also has in its collection Mardon's Battle of Greasy Grass, an oil on linen which also is quite large - 76 x 136 inches (just over six feet by about 11 feet).
"In The Battle of Greasy Grass, Mardon included individuals mostly ignored or unheard of in other battle representations," Brindza wrote in Points West. "Though he did paint Custer and other well known people, Mardon incorporated others such as Kate Bighead, a Cheyenne woman who witnessed the battle from a distance."
Mardon's Battle of Greasy Grass was purchased for the museum with funds from the William E. Weiss Memorial Fund, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon H. Barrows, and the Franklin A. West Memorial Fund.
The Paxson and Mardon works are situated across from each other with computer kiosks for more study. Earl Biss's General Custer in Blue and Green, 1996, is nearby.
"Earl Biss (1947 - 1998), artist and member of the Crow nation, focused not on the battle, but on the most well-known individual from the battle, George Armstrong Custer," according to Brindza. "Biss, a renowned abstract expressionist, conveyed emotion through color and line in the portrait General Custer in Blue and Green, 1996, using strengths from both his cultural background and artistic training."
While the Center has many letters and drawings concerning the battle, they have been displayed in a variety of cases in various locations. This new "Brush, Palette, and Custer's Last Stand" exhibit is the first time everything has been brought together in one showing.
Committed to connecting people with the Spirit of the American West, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center weaves the varied threads of the western experience-history and myth, art and Native culture, firearms technology and the nature of Yellowstone-into the rich panorama that is the American West.
The Center, an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, is now operating its summer schedule, open daily, 8 a.m. - 6 p.m. For general information, visit www.bbhc.org , or call (307) 587.4771.
For more information on the Battle of the Little Bighorn, visit the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument's Web site at www.nps.gov/libi/index.htm. The national monument, near Crow Agency, Montana, is the site of the June 25, 1876 battle between the U.S. Army's 7th cavalry and several bands of Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho.
Let's Talk About Art: Inspired by woods and critters
Kathleen Zimbicki grew up in an artistically inclined family. While most of her siblings' talents led them toward music, she struggled to find a niche there. Ms. Zimbicki played second fiddle, violin, alto ocarina and sang alto but felt that she didn't quite measure up to her siblings.
Then she found art.
"Coming from a competitive family, I had to do something well," she says.
When she first began drawing, she preferred sketching images of women in pretty dresses and interesting outfits. Ms. Zimbicki says this interest blossomed because Barbie dolls had not yet been created. Soon she was drawing and painting all the time.
"I drew or painted on anything that was available, even Daddy's books," she says.
Then she found art.
"Coming from a competitive family, I had to do something well," she says.
When she first began drawing, she preferred sketching images of women in pretty dresses and interesting outfits. Ms. Zimbicki says this interest blossomed because Barbie dolls had not yet been created. Soon she was drawing and painting all the time.
"I drew or painted on anything that was available, even Daddy's books," she says.
The environment she lived in as a child influenced much of her current work.
"Growing up in a small town in Washington County, with a wooded area on three sides, gave me time to play and dream," says Ms. Zimbicki, who now lives in Carnegie.
She says the woods and critters that surrounded her house still inspire some her artwork today. Pieces such as "No One Under 30 Eats Fish," "Green Rapture," "Midnight Circus," and "Jake's Lizard" are just a few of her nature-infused works.
In "Jake's Lizard," Ms. Zimbicki uses a variety of bright colors and intricate patterns to detail a close-up of a lizard. Her use of varied colors and patterns emulate through all of her work and illustrates a sense of playfulness in her art.
"Children love my art because it is childlike. Everything is usually pretty happy," she says.
Ms. Zimbicki is currently the proud president of Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and is excited about this year's ARTrageous centennial celebration.
Land as art
Land Art redefines the boundary between art and landscape
Photo courtesy of David Shaner/Museum of Contemporary craft
Land Art: David Shaner
Museum of Contemporary Craft
724 NW Davis St
Runs through August 7
Museum of Contemporary Craft
724 NW Davis St
Runs through August 7
It makes sense that the beginnings of land art took place somewhere in the throngs of the ‘60s hippie movement. Originating mostly in the southwestern U.S., artists would make giant creations in the earth itself using tractors, bulldozers and whatever else was needed to put a new face to the earth. This artistic sect was started as a protest to the commercialization of art and the tools needed to create art.
At about the same time, artist, sculptor and craft maker David Shaner had his own way of protesting his increasingly expensive hobby. Shaner was always fascinated with clay, stating in a 2001 interview for the Smithsonian Institute, “Clay always felt good to me. Whenever I would start a project with a painting or a blank sheet of paper, there was always a certain fear about ‘what am I going to do.’ But with a piece of clay, it just seemed like it was automatic. You just started working and it was a wonderful thing.”
By shifting away from the use of synthetic means, Shaner set the motion for what would become a lifetime of work.
Shaner was wildly influential to the world of ceramics, leading both the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts and garnering the first grant for ceramics from the NEA. Shaner settled down in Montana in 1970 where he worked on his projects before passing away in 2002.
The exhibit is a collection of work that spanned Shaner’s career as an artist. Not limited to solely ceramics, the exhibit also includes photographs and notes that provide greater insight into the complexities beyond the clay.
Shaner’s work itself is not particularly impressive to look at—unless you understand the difficulty of making ceramics—but the thoughts, emotions and questions that the work brings up are surprising. The work puts us back into our proper place in the planet—if even for a moment, we are once again an emerging superpower only beginning to understand our true potential.
A major theme of the exhibit is a celebration of the American west. The rich earthy tones of the dishes and molds remind us of the soils that we see around us, still rich in organic matter and full of nutrients. The red hues are uniquely western, bringing us back to the days of playing cowboys and Indians in the backyard. Shaner’s work is an embodiment of life and environment in the west: rugged, weathered and beautiful.
The Museum of Contemporary Craft is a partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art and is one of only a handful of places in the Northwest that devotes space to the exhibition of craft. Along with the exhibit, a book written by Peter Held on Shaner’s work, Following the Rhythms of Life: The Ceramic Art of David Shaner will also be available.
Yinka Shonibare’s Fourth Plinth, review
Yinka Shonibare’s work of art on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth sits high overlooking the square, joyful and enchanting.
It feels like a long time since we’ve had a substantial work of art on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, but boy was it worth the wait for Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle.
Doing just what it says in the title, the sculpture consists of a perfect replica of Nelson’s HMS Victory inside a giant Perspex bottle. Fully rigged with 31 hand-stitched canvas sails set as they were on the day of the Battle of Trafalgar, the oak, hardwood and brass model is minutely detailed, right down to 80 tiny cannon and miniature lifeboats, varying from the original only in the artist’s use of his trademark African textiles instead of plain canvas for the billowing sails.
Shonibare’s last act was to cork the bottle, seal it with red wax imprinted with his initials, a giant knick-knack ready for display on the nation’s very own whatnot.
There it sits, high up on the plinth overlooking the square, joyful and enchanting, an object of delight for adults and children alike. But because the plinth is so high, it is difficult to see it close to. Even if you walk up the short flight of steps to view it from the balustrade in front of the National Gallery, you’re still too far away to take in the details.
So by far the best thing is to forget the detail and view the work from across the square, where suddenly you can see the vessel intact, from prow to stern, as though in full sail on the high seas.
Shonibare is much too thoughtful an artist for this to have been a miscalculation. I’m guessing that he determined the ship’s scale by calculating the size of an ordinary ship-in-a bottle in proportion to the height of a grown man, then adjusted the proportion to the height of Nelson’s Column (which is, after all, the reason why the work is in Trafalgar Square in the first place).
In his artist’s statement, Shonibare says that the use of African textile patterns refers to “the legacy of British colonialism and its expansion in trade and Empire, made possible through the freedom on the seas and new trade routes that Nelson’s victory provided”.
He asks us to consider the relationship between Nelson’s “historic victory and the multicultural society we have in Britain today”.
Now, there are so many dodgy ideas packed into those two short sentences that I’m not going to bore you by entering into a kind of futile, politically correct debate that became so fashionable about 20 years ago.
Whatever else it may be, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle is an exhilarating work of art that needs no excuse for raising our spirits in the gloomy days we’re living through right now.
There it sits, high up on the plinth overlooking the square, joyful and enchanting, an object of delight for adults and children alike. But because the plinth is so high, it is difficult to see it close to. Even if you walk up the short flight of steps to view it from the balustrade in front of the National Gallery, you’re still too far away to take in the details.
So by far the best thing is to forget the detail and view the work from across the square, where suddenly you can see the vessel intact, from prow to stern, as though in full sail on the high seas.
Shonibare is much too thoughtful an artist for this to have been a miscalculation. I’m guessing that he determined the ship’s scale by calculating the size of an ordinary ship-in-a bottle in proportion to the height of a grown man, then adjusted the proportion to the height of Nelson’s Column (which is, after all, the reason why the work is in Trafalgar Square in the first place).
In his artist’s statement, Shonibare says that the use of African textile patterns refers to “the legacy of British colonialism and its expansion in trade and Empire, made possible through the freedom on the seas and new trade routes that Nelson’s victory provided”.
He asks us to consider the relationship between Nelson’s “historic victory and the multicultural society we have in Britain today”.
Now, there are so many dodgy ideas packed into those two short sentences that I’m not going to bore you by entering into a kind of futile, politically correct debate that became so fashionable about 20 years ago.
Whatever else it may be, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle is an exhilarating work of art that needs no excuse for raising our spirits in the gloomy days we’re living through right now.
Hitler's book of looted art uncovered
A lost photograph album detailing plans for a Nazi museum of stolen art has been discovered by a repair man after he visited the house of a former soldier.
John Pistone, 88, who was an American GI, never knew the significance of the heavy, green leather-bound volume titled "Picture Gallery Linz XIII," but took it as a memento from Hitler's mountain home in Berchtesgaden in 1945.
But the washing machine engineer, a history enthusiast, spotted the book at Pistone's home near Cleveland, Ohio, and made his own checks on the Internet.
He contacted Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, based in Dallas, which had been involved in the restitution of two other similar albums.
Robert Edsel, its founder, went to Ohio and realized the significance of the book.
Hitler, who was rejected from art school and wanted to become a great painter, was obsessed with his art collection, lecturing his staff each night even as the Allies were closing in on Berlin.
Every Christmas and birthday, he was presented with an album cataloguing looted Nazi art that he planned to install in a "Fuhrermuseum" he had designed for his home town of Linz in Austria.
Hitler envisioned the museum rivalling those in Dresden and Munich, and had helped draw up architectural plans, which eventually grew to include a theatre, an opera house and a hotel.
He collected 31 albums in total.
Photographs show him working on plans for his museum, while a model of Linz was moved to his bunker in Berlin.
John Pistone, 88, who was an American GI, never knew the significance of the heavy, green leather-bound volume titled "Picture Gallery Linz XIII," but took it as a memento from Hitler's mountain home in Berchtesgaden in 1945.
But the washing machine engineer, a history enthusiast, spotted the book at Pistone's home near Cleveland, Ohio, and made his own checks on the Internet.
He contacted Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, based in Dallas, which had been involved in the restitution of two other similar albums.
Robert Edsel, its founder, went to Ohio and realized the significance of the book.
Hitler, who was rejected from art school and wanted to become a great painter, was obsessed with his art collection, lecturing his staff each night even as the Allies were closing in on Berlin.
Every Christmas and birthday, he was presented with an album cataloguing looted Nazi art that he planned to install in a "Fuhrermuseum" he had designed for his home town of Linz in Austria.
Hitler envisioned the museum rivalling those in Dresden and Munich, and had helped draw up architectural plans, which eventually grew to include a theatre, an opera house and a hotel.
He collected 31 albums in total.
Photographs show him working on plans for his museum, while a model of Linz was moved to his bunker in Berlin.
Radar: Juventus vs. Fiorentina, Inside the Musician's Studio with Woodhands, LCD Soundsystem Afterparty, Keeping An Eye on Journalism, CATS
SPORTS | Soccer Showcase: Juventus vs. Fiorentina
Being the cosmopolitan city that it is, Toronto is home to soccer fans from all over the world. Though we've got our own team to cheer for these days, until Toronto FC becomes a winning team, many footie fanatics' real loyalties will remain with clubs from the Old Country (wherever it may be). Torontonians will pay big money to see their beloved teams and the city's become a prime destination for visits from world's big clubs, the latest being two of Italy's most storied franchises as Fiorentina squares off against Juventus today. There are some famous names in the line up including Italian master Alessandro Del Piero and French striker David Trezeguet, and while no one believes any of them will risk their million-dollar knees by throwing themselves all over the concrete pitch of the Rogers Centre to win a meaningless friendly, Sunday's match at BMO Field between Portugal's Benfica and Greece's Panathinaikos was passionate enough to descend into a bench-clearing brawl, so you never know.
Rogers Centre, 1 Blue Jay's Way, $59 - $99, 8 pm
MUSIC | Viewpoints: Inside the Musicians Studio
There's a pretty big show going down at the Kool Haus tonight, but some hot local talent is on display just down the street, where the Harbourfront Centre is hosting an intimate evening with a pair of homegrown masters of the electronic rock song. Woodhands is made up of Paul Banwatt and Dan Werb, two men whose energetic live shows and unironic use of the keytar have won them fans all over the world. They've just dropped their second album Remorsecapade and will be performing and discussing the record with the Toronto Star's music critic Ben Rayner as part of Harbourfront's Viewpoints series.
Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay, Free, 8 pm
PARTY | LCD Soundsystem Afterparty
A day after Victoria Day, trailblazing electronic punk-pop outfit LCD Soundsystem will be setting off some fireworks of their own on the shore of Toronto's harbour. After a much-hyped set at Kool Haus LCD's James Murphy and Pat Dahoney will head over to Wrongbar to spin tracks at an afterparty that will have inebriated partiers spilling into Queen Street til the wee hours of the morning. With Murphy doing a show and an afterparty in every town he visits, it's no wonder he looks twenty years older than all the other hip indie bands out there. Wait, what? He is twenty years older than them?
Wrongbar, 1279 Queen Street West, $10, 10 pm
PANEL | Keeping an Eye on Journalism
The media landscape is rapidly changing, and in an age when feedback on news stories comes as quickly as bloggers, wiki writers and critics can type it, does it really make sense for media organizations to be monitoring themselves anymore? A panel of the city's most esteemed journalistic minds tackle the issue of the increasingly irrelevant role of ombudsmen tonight in a forum presented by the Canadian Journalism Federation. No points for guessing what side of the argument CBC ombudsmen Vince Carlin will be on, but he'll have to argue his case against the Toronto Star's public editor Kathy English and the National Post's John Racovali. Like all gatherings of journalists and j-school nerds, there will be a post-discussion cocktail schmooze afterwards.
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue, $15 general, $5 students, 6:30 pm
THEATRE | CATS
Before anyone gets alarmed, yes CATS is coming back to Toronto. But it's only for one week, so Yonge Street will not be jammed with crowds of tourists wandering around in Mr. Mistoffelees t-shirts belting out "Memory" at the top of their lungs like it was back in the 80s. Mirvish Productions is remounting the classic much-loved and much-loathed musical until Sunday, giving you a brief chance to catch one of the longest-running shows to ever hit Broadway. The eight-show run will be performed by the touring company from Cats-Eye, and is the only North American production of the play actually sanctioned by Andrew Lloyd Weber. Runs til May 30.
Canon Theatre, 244 Victoria Street, $30 - $84, Tuesday to Saturday 7:30 pm, Matinees Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm
Solo Women Travel
There are both benefits and negative factors to solo travel. One of the major benefits is that your time is your own to do what you want with. If you want to spend an extra hour looking around a museum, you can. If you want to spend an extra week in a town you’ve fallen in love with, you don’t have to discuss it with anyone. Plus, solo travel opens you up to meeting more people – maybe it won’t just be a town you fall in love with. You’ll get closer to your destination because one person travelling alone can often have experiences that aren’t open to groups.
A negative factor is that many women travelling solo experience loneliness. You don’t have anyone to share the experience with. But solo travel allows you to meet people along the way who you can share a day, a week or a month with… and some of these relationships will last a lifetime. Of course it’s important to keep in touch with people back home, and a good chat on the phone might alleiviate some of that loneliness.
It’s also important to consider security when women travel solo. Make sure you keep your belongings hidden and lock your bag with a padlock. Since you’re travelling alone, you don’t have anyone to watch your things, if for example you need to visit the bathroom. A bike lock can attach your bags to a handy post, or you could ask someone to keep an eye on them for you. You’ll have to become a good judge of character!
If you’re a woman considering solo travel, stop thinking about it and just do it! You’ll have a memorable experience that you’ll never forget – you’ll grow as a person, you’ll see things you never thought you would, and you’ll have a great time. Solo women travel is something you won’t regret.
The Indie Travel Podcast is publishing a solo women travel book, called The Art of Solo Travel: A Girls’ Guide by Stephanie Lee. It’s designed to help women travellers plan and enjoy their trips, because we want to see more women traveling solo.
A negative factor is that many women travelling solo experience loneliness. You don’t have anyone to share the experience with. But solo travel allows you to meet people along the way who you can share a day, a week or a month with… and some of these relationships will last a lifetime. Of course it’s important to keep in touch with people back home, and a good chat on the phone might alleiviate some of that loneliness.
It’s also important to consider security when women travel solo. Make sure you keep your belongings hidden and lock your bag with a padlock. Since you’re travelling alone, you don’t have anyone to watch your things, if for example you need to visit the bathroom. A bike lock can attach your bags to a handy post, or you could ask someone to keep an eye on them for you. You’ll have to become a good judge of character!
If you’re a woman considering solo travel, stop thinking about it and just do it! You’ll have a memorable experience that you’ll never forget – you’ll grow as a person, you’ll see things you never thought you would, and you’ll have a great time. Solo women travel is something you won’t regret.
The Indie Travel Podcast is publishing a solo women travel book, called The Art of Solo Travel: A Girls’ Guide by Stephanie Lee. It’s designed to help women travellers plan and enjoy their trips, because we want to see more women traveling solo.
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