"I had no desire to copy Pollock. I didn’t want to take a stick and dip it in a can of enamel. I needed something more liquid, watery, thinner. All my life, I have been drawn to water and translucency. I love the water; I love to swim, to watch changing seascapes. One of my favorite childhood games was to fill a sink with water and punt nail polish into to see what happened when the colors burst up the surface, merging into each other as floating, changing shapes." - Helen Frankenthaler
Her
paintings looked like
watercolors, but were created with oils. To achieve the effect, she heavily diluted her oil paints with turpentine, then dripped them onto an unprimed canvas on the floor, in a brushless technique reminiscent of Jackson Pollock's, called a "soak stain." But where Pollock's paint was often thick and sat on top of the canvas, hers
drenched it in
color, creating a unique, softer work.
Ms. Frankenthaler passed away today, at the age of 83, after a long illness. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Dec 27, 2011 -
35 comments
Don Van Vliet is self-taught. He neither expects allowances for the amateur’s lack of dexterity nor permits any technical deficiency on his own part to limit his scope. Nobody's understanding or forbearance sets limits to what he does - any more than does the fear of going wrong. The lacerations, transgressions, and awkward moments that he introduces are unpredictable, as is their duration; when he takes the figures that confront him and tugs them out of shape, he simultaneously tugs himself out of shape - and out of his own limitations. - Roberto Ohrt
posted by Trurl
on Dec 14, 2011 -
14 comments
One afternoon in September 1958, a beautiful, distinguished and mysterious woman arrived at the door of number 46 rue Hippolyte Maindron. This was the Paris studio where Alberto Giacometti had been working since 1926, having arrived in the city four years earlier. [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Dec 1, 2011 -
7 comments
The Elements of Drawing: John Ruskin's Teaching Collection at Oxford digitizes the drawings, engravings, and paintings that
John Ruskin collected (and created) for use in teaching drawing. The objects can be viewed separately or in their teaching order and context, with Ruskin's own catalog annotations. The site also suggests how modern art students can put the collection to use, with instructional video and a variety of drawing exercises. Ruskin also assembled another fine art collection for working-class viewers in Sheffield; you can see that collection at the
Museum of Sheffield, which also helps sponsor a digital reconstruction of the original museum building, the
St. George's Museum.
posted by thomas j wise
on Nov 14, 2011 -
5 comments
"It was no accident that arts funding was once again brought to national attention with the exhibit Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. Since the 80s, the enemies of the NEA have not been those with differences of opinion about what art should be supported or how. Instead they oppose any support at all for art of any kind."
Hide/Seek, Culture Wars and the History of the NEA (NSFW, art)
posted by The Whelk
on Nov 1, 2011 -
115 comments
Britain's finest Baroque portraitist , on a par with Frans Hals, has been all but forgotten, but a new BBC documentary and associated website seek to address that. William Dobson, 1611-46, was painter to Charles I's court during the English Civil War, and the turmoil of the period meant that much of his biography and even the names of the subjects of his portraits were lost. But
many of his portraits have survived, and they're astonishing.
[more inside]
posted by rory
on Oct 1, 2011 -
18 comments
"Menagerie" is a series of 10 polygonal animal paintings by Laura Bifano, inspired by her love of nature and classic 8-bit video games.
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Sep 22, 2011 -
21 comments
The Internet can be a powerful tool when it comes to collaborations between artists of all ilks. Laptop band Project Jenny, Project Jan harnessed said power when it set out to create a video for its new song,
“Lucky Me,” producing a lovely, painterly video courtesy of a Turkish
Ebrû artist the band had never met.
Hikmet Barutçugil redefined the aspects of Ebrû with a scientific approach and managed to transfuse marbling into other disciplines, from architecture to popular crafts.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Apr 23, 2011 -
1 comment
Two people involved in marathon, inspirational artistic efforts:
Six-year-old
Jack Henderson is offering to
draw anything in exchange for a donation to the Sick Kids hospital in Edinburgh, which treats his little brother Noah for bronchiolitis.
Meanwhile, artist
Patrick Joyce, aka The Incurable Optimist, is trying to paint 100 portraits before motor neurone disease (also known as ALS) robs him of his abilities, and, ultimately, his life.
Their works include, respectively,
A rubber duck riding a bike shooting lasers, and
Professor Stephen Hawking.
[more inside]
posted by penguin pie
on Mar 26, 2011 -
5 comments
Caravaggio's crimes exposed in Rome's police files: "Four hundred years after his death,
Caravaggio is a 21st Century superstar among old master painters. His stark, dramatically lit, super-realistic paintings strike a modern chord - but his police record is more shocking than any modern bad boy rock star's. An
exhibition of documents at Rome's State Archives throws vivid light on his tumultuous life here at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries."
[Via] [more inside]
posted by homunculus
on Feb 18, 2011 -
50 comments
