Sunday, December 31, 2023

Happy New Year's Eve!

 


🎆🎇🎆🎇


Happy New Year's Eve 

Fireworks at Ryōgoku bridge 

Utagawa Hiroshige 

Woodblock Print on Paper

 1858 

Ashmolean Museum 







New Year’s Eve Foxfires by the Enoki tree at the Shōzoku Inari Shrine in Ōji 
 Ōji, Shōzoku Enoki Ōmisoka no kitsunebi | 王子装束ゑの木大晦日の狐火 



Series

One Hundred Famous Views of Edo | Meisho Edo hyakkei | 名所江戸百景

Artist/makerHiroshige Utagawa, I (1797 - 1858) (designer)
Associated peopleEikichi Uoya (mid-19th century) (publisher)
Associated placeAsia > Japan (place of creation)
Date1857 (date of creation)
Material and techniquenishiki-e (full colour) woodblock print, with bokashi (tonal gradation)

Ashmolean Museum 

Saturday, December 30, 2023

Thank You! On to 2024


Leonard Cohen lifts his hat in appreciation of all of you who ventured to my studio this year and to those who engaged with my artwork online! 

Deepest thanks to my collectors, supporters, and friends who helped make 2023 memorable. Thanks to my fellow @18thstreetarts artists who worked tirelessly to make this happen - especially @rebecca.youssef_studio and @alexandradillonartist!!!! 

And deep thanks to the folks at @18thstreetarts who support us day in and day out. And thanks to the city of Santa Monica for your financial support for our events. Leonard has found a new home and I am more inspired than ever to create. 

On to 2024!

Happy New Year! 

Why did Frans Hals paint monsters in his friend's portrait?


From the National Gallery in London:

"Curator Bart Cornelis explains the meaning behind a hidden monster and skull in this 17th-century portrait by Frans Hals, and how they helped to identify the sitter as Isaac Massa.

He's accompanied by one of our restorers, Paul Ackroyd, and Larry Keith, Head of Conservation and Keeper, who help reveal this painting's secrets.

🎨  Find out more about the artist Frans Hals: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/frans-hals

🎨 Book tickets now for 'The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Frans Hals'
Open 30 September 2023 – 21 January 2024

Hals was one of the most sought-after painters of his generation. A gifted artist whose deft brushwork was unparalleled, he built his reputation on a new style of portrait – highly unusual in his time – that showed relaxed, lively sitters, often smiling, and even laughing.

This exhibition, the first major retrospective of Hals in more than thirty years, means a new generation can discover why he deserves his place as one of the greatest painters in Western art."


 

Saturday, December 23, 2023

A Milwaukee Christmas!

While in Milwaukee, President Biden stopped by Rashawn Spivey’s small business. Merry Christmas delivered to my friends and family in MKE

Thursday, December 21, 2023

PERFECT DAYS from Wim Wenders - Official Trailer


Hirayama is content with his simple life cleaning toilets in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Unexpected encounters reveal more of his story in a deeply moving and poetic reflection on finding beauty in the world around us.

A Film by Wim Wenders
Starring Koji Yakusho

Happy Winter Solstice!

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


 

« Les animaux sont des gens comme les autres ! » | Exposition Gilles Aillaud | Centre Pompidou


Lions, giraffes, seals… Gilles Aillaud, who died in 2005, painted animals a lot, often in captivity. Asked about his choice of animals as subject matter, Gilles Aillaud replied: “because I love them”. The fragility of our relationship with living things shows the relevance of his work.

Vinciane Despret, philosopher of science, shows us four paintings by the artist, in the company of Didier Ottinger, curator of the exhibition “Gilles Aillaud. Political animal »



Gilles Aillaud with one of his paintings in 1995


Monday, December 18, 2023

Jeff Koons Killed Her Review


The decision by an arts journal to allow the famous artist to veto a historian’s essay about his work created “a chilling effect on the critical culture,” a journalism expert said.

Gift Link Below:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/17/arts/design/jeff-koons-brooklyn-rail-tulips-golan.html?unlocked_article_code=1.G00.hR-u.zIeVAr45iyK6&smid=tw-share



From the Article:
A 1937 mural by Fernand Léger and Charlotte Perriand, titled “Essential Happiness, New Pleasures,” at Tate Liverpool in 2018. The outstretched hand with flowers reminded Romy Golan, a historian and author, of Koons’s Paris sculpture and she decided to write about the two works.Credit...Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris; Photo by Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Friday, December 15, 2023

Christmas With the Colonel by Yukari Sakamoto