Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Sargent and Fashion Moves from Boston to the Tate


With strings of pearls and collars of lace - #SargentAndFashion is now open at Tate Britain. ✨ Discover Sargent’s use of fashion as a powerful tool to express identity and personality with nearly 60 portraits ➡️ bit.ly/3RTc3iA  

Until 7 July 2024. Members go free. 💅 

Friday, January 05, 2024

The World of Pastels



From the National Gallery in London:

"Delve into the strange and magical world of pastels ✨ Liotard's pastel and oil versions of 'The Lavergne Family Breakfast' have been reunited for first time in 250 years. Book to visit our free exhibition: bit.ly/3gR1VIO"

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

R.B. Kitaj | London to Los Angeles | Exhibition Film




In London, the Piano Nobile Gallery presents the exhibition -  R.B. Kitaj: London to Los Angeles. This short film features interviews with Marco Livingstone, a leading specialist on Kitaj’s work; Simon Martin, Director of Pallant House Gallery; and the artist’s daughter Dominie Kitaj.

R.B. Kitaj: London to Los Angeles is the first retrospective of the artist’s work in a decade. It provides a chronological overview of Kitaj's career, exploring the relationship between his art and the places he lived. 

The Piano Nobile Gallery explains that "Although he travelled widely, spending seasons and sometimes whole years in California, Catalonia, Paris and New York, Kitaj made London his home from 1959 – the year he entered the Royal College of Art – until 1997. For the last decade of his life, from 1997 to 2007, he lived in Los Angeles. The exhibition includes little-known early work of the fifties, the groundbreaking ‘collagist’ work of the sixties that established his reputation, and the life drawings and glowing paintings of the seventies, continuing through to Kitaj's rediscovery of painting in the eighties and his final period in Los Angeles. An accompanying publication includes original essays by Andrew Dempsey, Marco Livingstone and Colin Wiggins, in addition to extended excerpts from Kitaj’s letters to Livingstone, now held by the Tate Archive and published here for the first time."







Gregg Chadwick
The Diasporist (Portrait of R.B. Kitaj)
30”x22” monotype on paper 2011


 

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Changes - David Bowie



Gregg Chadwick
Changes - David Bowie
41.5"x25.5"pastel on paper 2016


On January 8, 1935 Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi and in Brixton, London on January 8, 1947, David Bowie was born.

Bowie's decades of groundbreaking music and his shapeshifting persona inspired so many of us little aliens in suburbia to fight against conformity and become our true selves.
My artwork looks back on Bowie when he released his haunting song "Where Are We Now?", which is as much a painting in soft greys as it is a song. A quiet rhythm of drums and synth warp and weft with minor key piano chords and Bowie's plaintive, elegiac voice.
Set in a Berlin of memory and dream, Bowie's voice and lyrics question the themes of human bondage, release, freedom, doubt, ageing, and death. Bowie lived in West Berlin between 1976 and 1979 in the Schöneberg district in a house with Iggy Pop while Brian Eno and Tony Visconti were helping record Bowie's Berlin trilogy of albums Low, Heroes, and Lodger in the now legendary Hansa Studios. Years later, Bowie looks back in "Where Are We Now?" and echoes his words about Low, "Berlin has the strange ability to make you write only the important things. Anything else you don't mention."

The political and the personal merge in my pastel painting of Bowie. We are left with existential questions and are reminded that bodies age, marriages end, friendships dissolve and memories fade. But Bowie's quietly defiant voice does not give in to any dying of the light.



Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Anish Kapoor's Gangnam for Freedom



                 Gangnam for Freedom - Anish Kapoor and Friends 

The British sculptor Anish Kapoor and a group of his human rights oriented friends have released a new video in partnership with Amnesty International and PEN International to bring attention to the ongoing persecution of artists and writers across the globe from China to Russia who have been harassed and imprisoned because of their work. Taking up where Ai Wei Wei's recent Gangnam Style video left off, Kapoor's own Gangnam Style romp combines symbols of imprisonment and torture with the names of many who have been persecuted in their artistic strivings for freedom. Please watch, visit the links, and find out what you can do to help shed light on this growing problem of censorship and oppression.

As an emigré from India to the United Kingdom, Anish Kapoor has often been concerned with the ideas of freedom and dislocation in his artwork. I have posted a few examples below that provide a brief glimpse into his artistic practice. For me, Anish Kapoor is one of the most important and visionary artists working today.



Anish Kapoor.
Dismemberment Site 1

Mild Steel Tube and Tensioned Fabric 2009
Gibbs Farm, Kaipara Harbour, New Zealand
photos courtesy  Gibbs Farm

 In North America, his best-known creation, Cloud Gate, is the centerpiece of Chicago’s Millennium Park:




Anish Kapoor
Cloud Gate
Stainless Steel 2004-2006
Millenium Park, Chicago, Illinois
Photos by Gregg Chadwick



Anish Kapoor, Hole1988sculpturefiberglass and pigment84 in. x 84 in. x 102 in. (213.36 cm x 213.36 cm x 259.08 cm)Collection SFMOMAGift of Mrs. Milo Gates© Anish Kapoor

Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/169##ixzz2CtD7h8ex
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art


More At: 


Sunday, January 29, 2012

The Automaton's Secret

by Gregg Chadwick


Henri Maillardet's Automaton at The Franklin Institute 

In November 1928, the fire scarred remains of a mechanical boy were dropped off at The Franklin Institute  in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Left in pieces, it took months of painstaking work to reassemble the automaton. Little was known about the history of this extraordinary object. Like the automaton in Brian Selznick's magical, graphic novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Martin Scorsese's wonderful film adaptation of the book now simply entitled Hugo, the machine itself provided the clue to its origins.
When the complicated cogs and mechanisms were repaired and the machine was rewound for the first time in decades, the automaton's hand began to draw.  Remarkably the machine's mechanical memory, held four drawings and three poems  (illustrated below). One of the poems finished with a signature in French, "Ecrit par l'Automate de Maillardet." The mechanical boy signed the name of his creator - Maillardet. 

Further research led to the Swiss watch-maker and automaton creator Henri Maillardet. Working primarily in London, Maillardet seems to have created The Franklin Institute's Automaton before 1800 while working in the mechanical shop of Pierre Jaquet-Droz. The Franklin Institute believes that Maillardet created only one other automaton that could write. This missing masterpiece wrote in Chinese and was created for the Emperor of China and given as a gift by King George III of England.

Mysteries still remain. How did the automaton get to the United States? Why did it end up in Philadelphia? A clue might be found in the fire damaged state of the automaton upon its delivery at the Franklin Institute.
It is known that the circus impresario and showman P.T. Barnum collected curios, including automata, and housed them in his museums in New York that were destroyed by fire. Perhaps the Franklin Institute's mechanical boy was saved from P.T. Barnum's smoldering collection  - waiting for someone to turn his key once more.





Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret was inspired by the Franklin Institute's Automaton.
In this video shot at the museum, Selznick discusses Maillardet's Automaton and its influence on his book.











Above:
 Four Drawings and Three Poem's Written by Maillardet's Restored Automaton at the Franklin Institute



Charles Penniman adjusts Maillardet's Automaton at the Franklin Institute.




A Still From Martin Scorsese's "Hugo" Illustrating His Adaptation of Maillardet's Automaton




Henri Maillardet's Automaton at The Franklin Institute and More From CBS Sunday Morning



Henri Maillardet's Automaton at The Franklin Institute


Much More at:
Maillardet's Automaton at the Franklin Institute
Brian Selznick and The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Martin Scorsese's Hugo