Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Happy New Year!

Fireworks.
By Nick Pacione.


http://www.nickpacione.com/

Say Goodbye to 2013...

That's SIR Antony Gormley To You and Me!

Renowned British artist and sculptor--and recipient of the supremely prestigious Turner Prize--Antony Gormley has earned a knighthood in the New Year Honours List.


In an interview with The Independent, he said of his knighthood, "I think it’s a good thing for sculpture.I think it’s a feeling that these sort of awards went to people that have served the country in obvious ways militarily, politically or industrially. And now they also go to people that have opened people’s minds and this reflects that shift."

I blogged about his marvelous interactive installation Horizon Field Hamburg here last year.

His iconic, massive Angel of the North graces a hill that was the site of a former coal mine in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England.


Field (including a sub-installation entitled Field for the British Isles) was an installation of 35,000 small clay human figures forming a dense covering on the floor of the installation area.


He is perhaps most famous for his series of cast bodies that have shown up in various spots around the world, but most notably in hi piece Another Place. This particular installation sees 100 of these cast iron figures spread out across Crosby Beach, north of Liverpool in England. The figures are alternately exposed and buried by the ebb and flow of water but also by shifting sand. The lone figures, far apart, are all set into the earth facing out to see in a tableau of eerie longing and yearning, of a sense of departure from terra firma and eve from this world.


Congratulations, Sir Gormley!

http://www.antonygormley.com/

Welcome, Robin!

Newly out gay journalist, author, and Peabody award winner Robin Roberts: gay, black, brave, and on the road to recovery from a bone marrow transplant after her diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndrome!


Continued success and continued strength to you, Robin!

Monday, December 30, 2013

BEAUTY: Painting--Men of Antiquity, Part Two

Handsome-ass men from long ago... lookin' good, gentlemen!


Top to bottom: Self-Portrait as a Young Man by Christian Seybold ; Self Portrait by Domenico Carpiolo; Lira Da Braccio Singer by Anonymous; Portrait of the Architect Niccolo Matas by Pietro Benvenuti; Portrait of A Young Man With Parrot and Pomegranate by Nicolo dell Abate; Portrait of William B. Ogden by Anders Zorn; Self Portrait by Anselm Feuerbach; Portrait of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington by Sir Thomas Lawrence; Leon Riesner by Eugene Delcaroix; Sir James Clark Ross by John R. Wildman; Dr. Samuel Jean Pozzi At Home by John Singer Sargent

Sunday, December 29, 2013

BEAUTY: Painting--Tibor Nagy

There is something about cityscapes that lend themselves to being seen through rain and Tibor Nagy's evocative, wistful, lonely scenes of city streets and traffic seem to dissolve like tissue paper.


Top to bottom: A Drive Under Darkening Skies; A Red Glimpse; Ghost Town; In The Light; Lurking Dusk; Under The Arches; Watery Shroud

http://nagytibor.com/

Saturday, December 28, 2013

BEAUTY: Sculpture--Kate MacDowell

Internationally renowned sculptor Kate MacDowell says she is interested in the conflict between the romantic ideal of union with the natural world and our contemporary impact on the environment. Her mutant creations eerily combine human and animal or human and plant in a way that transcends both.

MacDowell says, "These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops. They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones. In some pieces aspects of the human figure stand-in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world. In others, animals take on anthropomorphic qualities when they are given safety equipment to attempt to protect them from man-made environmental threats. In each case the union between man and nature is shown to be one of friction and discomfort with the disturbing implication that we too are vulnerable to being victimized by our destructive practices.

I hand sculpt each piece out of porcelain...It highlights both the impermanence and fragility of natural forms in a dying ecosystem, while paradoxically, being a material that can last for thousands of years and is historically associated with high status and value. I see each piece as a captured and preserved specimen, a painstaking record of endangered natural forms and a commentary on our own culpability."


Top to bottom: Assisted Living 2; Assisted Living; Badgered; Casualty; God of Change; Panhandlers; Predator; Predator detail; Strange Fruit

http://katemacdowell.com/

Friday, December 27, 2013

"Drifting In And Out" by Porcelain Raft

Dream pop jam session... Porcelain Raft is Mauro Remiddi. And he is "Drifting in and out..."




http://porcelainraft.com/

BEAUTY: Painting--Snow Art 2013

A collection of lovely art to remind us that although winter is still with us, the days are getting longer...


Top to bottom: Wolves At Night by Alfred Wierusz Kowalski; Twilight, an etching by Anna Syperek; A Clear Winter by Arthur Lismer; Rabbit Warren At Pontoise, Snow by Camille Pissarro; Shoveling Snow, New England by Childe Hassam; Snowbound by N.C. Wyeth; Winter by Aleksey Savrasov; illustration by Theodor Severin Kittelsen