Speed of Life

What Are You Doing New Years Eve? by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt

by Gregg Chadwick Helen Frankenthaler Mountains and Sea 7' 2 5/8" x 9' 9 1/4" oil on canvas 1952 National Gallery of Art, Washington DC "Fashion and money, fame and power politics have played a part in all art worlds. You've just got to plug away....  I see a revival of the meaning of the word "quality"---a search for truth and beauty in lieu of stock certificates. People are most interested in what's real, what endures." - Helen Frankenthaler (From a Conversation With Lee Rosenbaum ) Helen Frankenthaler's painting  Mountains and Sea opened a painterly universe. She poured, dripped, and floated thinned oil paint directly onto an unprimed canvas, creating a stained surface in which the pigment spread into and throughout the canvas fibers. The painting is mesmerizing, like the open sea is mesmerizing. Color beckons almost like song. As viewers we take the role of Odysseus, some will remain tied to a mast - fighting the beauty and...

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Trailer #1 One Year Left to Read the Book First For Those Who Haven't Had the Chance. Wonderful Adventure. Happy Holidays!

by Gregg Chadwick Colors 40"x30" oil on linen March 2003-December 2011 painting by Gregg Chadwick Today, with the casing of the colors in Baghdad, another war has ended. My thoughts are with the families who have lost loved ones and with the troops who are returning home. A few weeks ago I was on a flight from LAX to Monterey seated near a young soldier who had just returned from Iraq. He was eager to talk and chatted about his specialization in the Army and his plans for the immediate future. A tech job in Silicon Valley beckoned. The men and women coming home from Iraq have given much for our country and have much more to offer our society in the future. I remember when my father came home from Vietnam. Having fought in Korea as well, this was the end of his second war. Our family reunited overseas delaying my father's reentry into life in the US. There were no parades and because my father stayed in the Corps as an active duty Marine, little seemed to chang...

by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick Berlin in Rauch Licht (Berlin in Smoke Light) 24"x18" oil on linen 2011 Private Collection Los Angeles Berlin embodies the future and at the same time carries the scars of the past. While recently in Berlin my painting Rauch Licht (Berlin in Smoke Light) was inspired by the palpable sense of beauty and the smoke of time seemingly hovering in the air. A soundtrack of Bowie, Lou Reed and U2 almost audibly haunts this mysterious vision. Will light let us break free from this Berlin Noir?

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All! Darlene Love lead vocals --- The E Street Band --- Clarence Clemons tenor sax solo Danny Federici keyboards Garry Tallent bass Steven Van Zandt guitars Patti Scialfa - backing vocals Max Weinberg drums --- The Miami Horns --- Mark Pender trumpet Rick Gazda trumpet Stan Harrison tenor sax Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg trombone Eddie Manion baritone sax Arno Hecht saxophone Pat Thrall guitars Mark Alexander piano Ula Hedwig backing vocals Edna Wright backing vocals Zoë Yanakis percussion Benjamin Newberry chimes

by Gregg Chadwick Lady Gaga Poses For Tony Bennett in His Atelier photo and concept by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair During Lady Gaga's entertaining Thanksgiving special she joked about her brief gig as a life model for singer and visual artist Tony Bennett. Gaga recounted: "I walked in and said, 'Well, Tony, here we are,' and I dropped my robe and I got into position. I felt shy and thought, 'It's Tony Bennett. Why am I naked?" Lady Gaga had come face to face with what Kathleen Rooney describes as the “spine-tingling combination of power and vulnerability, submission and dominance” of nude modeling in her marvelous book  Live Nude Girl : My Life As An Object. Rooney's book   provides an introspective look at the history and challenges of art modeling from the model's point of view. Rooney's meditative prose leads us to a point of connection between muse and artist. Why after centuries of images in charcoal, paint, stone and ...

by Gregg Chadwick Édouard Manet Portrait of Madame Brunet 52 1/8" x 39 3/8" oil on canvas 1860-1863 (Reworked in 1867) Recently Purchased by the Getty Museum, Los Angeles Courtesy Getty Museum In 1862 in Le Boulevard , a Parisian news sheet which was a sort of precursor to the L.A. Weekly or the Village Voice , the poet Baudelaire wrote a small article entitled Painters and Engravers . This was one of the few times that Baudelaire, who in his essay The Painter of Modern Life called for artists to search for subjects in the rancor and din of the urban street, wrote expressly about the art of his friend Édouard Manet. Baudelaire wrote,"M. Manet is the author of The Spanish Singer , which caused a great sensation in the last Salon. We will see in the next one a number of paintings by him imbued with the flavor of Spain, which leads one to believe that the genius of Spain has fled to France." With the news that the Getty Museum has purchased Édouard Manet'...

"So often we think that when we're talking about the AIDS epidemic … we should be focusing mainly on the contributions that people in medicine can make—and we need those contributions…. But what I want to suggest is that we also need artists to enter the conversation, to enter the mix."  - David Gere, project director for the Art/Global Health Center and an associate professor and World Art and Cultures co-chair. Today we join as a global community and pay tribute to the millions of lives lost and families affected by HIV/AIDS on World AIDS Day. We also pay tribute to the nurses, care givers and doctors who have cared for those afflicted and all those working for a cure. People light candles in the shape of a red ribbon, the symbol of the AIDS awareness campaign, during a rally to mark World AIDS Day in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009.  AP PHOTO/ACHMAD IBRAHIM This morning the Washington Post sponsored an online chat with UCLA's Dr. Michael Gottlieb...

In this moving, much watch video, shot in February 2011, Zach Wahls - a 19-year-old University of Iowa student - addresses a public forum on House Joint Resolution 6 in the Iowa House of Representatives. Wahls has two mothers, and came to oppose House Joint Resolution 6 which would end civil unions in Iowa. The fight to to keep marriage equality continues in Iowa and across the country! Above is Talking With's interview with Mr. Wahls in which Zach speaks about what it was like growing up with two mothers, what led him to decide to go and speak before the House of Representatives, how his life has changed after this speech thrust him into the public eye, and what other young people can do to fight for equality and speak out against intolerance. Thanks to Talking With for the comment and link!

by Gregg Chadwick The Lady , a new film by director Luc Besson inspired by the life of Burma's courageous Aung San Suu Kyi and her husband Michael Aris, opens for a limited release this week at Laemmle's Music Hall Theatre in Beverly Hills. This engagement will run from December 2 - December 8, 2011. The film stars Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh as Suu Kyi and David Thewlis as her husband Michael Aris. The Los Angeles Times explains that the film is "a timely political drama" about the volatile political events in Burma as well as "a love story about the uncommon bond that existed between Suu Kyi and her late husband, Michael Aris ... an Oxford University scholar and Asian specialist, Aris took charge of raising the couple's two sons in England while his wife was held captive in her homeland, and he worked tirelessly to raise Western awareness of his wife's fight for democracy." The Lady was shot mainly in Thailand using Burmese refugee...

by Gregg Chadwick In this Nov. 18 photo, UC Davis officer John Pike uses pepper spray on unarmed and non-threatening protesters. (AP Photo/The Enterprise, Wayne Tilcock, File) Miley Cyrus Releases Video in Support of the #Occupy Movement: The clip pairs a remix of Cyrus' 2010 song Liberty Walk with footage from the global #Occupy protests. The video begins with an overlay indicating that the clip is "dedicated to the thousands of people who are standing up for what they believe in." Cyrus' video features powerful images of police crack downs on citizens taking a stand against economic inequity wedded to an infectious beat. Rolling Stone writes,"It's a bold move for the singer – while most of the artists who have thrown their support behind Occupy Wall Street are pretty much the usual lefty rocker suspects, Cyrus is reaching out to an audience who are likely to be either apolitical or outright hostile to her message." As an artist, I know w...