Living Well Is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins is a classic New Yorker profile of Gerald and Sara Murphy, central figures of the Lost Generation social circle in 1920s France. F. Scott Fitzgerald created Dick and Nicole Diver, the central couple of Tender Is the Night, by merging himself and his wife Zelda, with the Murphys. Gerald was a
painter of note (examples:
1,
2,
3,
4), whose masterpiece
has been lost. After seven years of painting, Murphy stopped, and never restarted, for a
host of reasons, from the illness of his son to his
closeted gayness. But the Murphys are probably best known for "the special quality of their life." They hosted parties and
lived in a villa on the Mediterranean coast and were both painted by many artists,
including Pablo
Picasso. They were the subject of a
recent biography and an
essay collection.
posted by Kattullus
on Jan 11, 2013 -
10 comments
NSFW
Lucien Clergue is a French Photographer from Arles, and renowned for his
Nu zébré.
He was a friend of
Picasso and
Jean Cocteau.
He still gives the occasional
talk:
Ansel said to me "I have been here for 40 years and I have never seen what you see."
Clergue: " I am Mediterranean by birth. What you see, I don't see. I look at the details."
posted by adamvasco
on Feb 2, 2012 -
5 comments
This stealthy undertaking was not an act of robbery or espionage but rather a crucial operation in what would become an association called UX, for “Urban eXperiment.” UX is sort of like an artist’s collective, but far from being avant-garde—confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new—its only audience is itself. More surprising still, its work is often radically conservative, intemperate in its devotion to the old. Through meticulous infiltration, UX members have carried out shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair, with an ethos of “restoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain.” The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris. - Wired.com
"The New French Hacker-Artist Underground"
posted by The Whelk
on Jan 24, 2012 -
20 comments
Shortly before noon yesterday morning an art thief walked into the
Weinstein Gallery near San Francisco's Union Square, grabbed Pablo Picasso's 1965 pencil drawing,
"Tête de Femme (Head of a Woman)" and strolled casual out of the museum to a waiting cab. Witnesses described the man as a "well dressed" "white man about 6 feet tall, age 30 to 35, wearing a dark jacket, a white shirt, dark pants, large dark glasses and loafers with no socks." Surveillance cameras at nearby restaurant Lefty O'Doul's appear to have
captured the suspect as he walked briskly down the street, Picasso under arm.
“
Most galleries that show this caliber of artwork don’t put it on street level,” said gallery owner Rowland Weinstein. “It’s very upsetting, because my goal is to keep this kind of work accessible to the public.” Weinstein says the piece was insured and is valued at $200,000.
posted by 2bucksplus
on Jul 6, 2011 -
101 comments
F for Fake (French: Vérités et mensonges) is the last major film completed by Orson Welles, who directed, co-wrote, and starred in the film. Initially released in 1974, it focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a fast-paced, meandering investigation of the natures of authorship and authenticity, as well as the basis of the value of art. Loosely a documentary, the film operates in several different genres and has been described as a kind of film essay. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu
on Sep 5, 2010 -
26 comments
Minotaure published only 12 issues between 1933 and 1939.
The covers were by some of the leading artists of the
day century. (
via)
posted by adamvasco
on Aug 9, 2010 -
14 comments
A Hidden Picasso: Will Shank always suspected something was buried beneath Picasso's
Scène de Rue, a somber street scene painted by Picasso in the fall of 1900 during his first stay in Paris. X-rays revealed a second painting: a nightclub scene which appeared to be the prototype for Picasso's
Le Moulin de la Galette, a 1900 painting thought to be the first Picasso made in Paris. Technicians extracted the colors visible through the cracks in the surface of
Scène de Rue and transferred them onto a black-and-white radiograph.
posted by fandango_matt
on Mar 27, 2007 -
17 comments
This time-lapse video of an oil-painting being created by Pablo Picasso is brief, but captivating. The clip is a scene taken from the 1955 French documentary "
The Mystery of Picasso," in which director Henri-Georges Clouzot filmed the artist painting 20 different pieces. Bizarrely enough, almost all the art created for the film had to be destroyed upon close of production due to contractual obligation.
Via
posted by jonson
on Jan 1, 2007 -
28 comments
When Henri met Pablo. Wandering through the rue des Martyrs in 1908, Picasso stopped beside an upholstery shop. "A head peered out, the face of a woman, hard eyes, a penetrating look, decisiveness and clarity. The canvas was huge. I enquired about the price. 'A hundred sous,' replied the dealer. 'You can paint over it.' It was one of the truest portraits ever of the French psyche."
Henri Rousseau's five-franc, life-size woman in Van Dyck black stayed at Picasso's side until his death, longer than any flesh-and-blood muse.
A century later, she towers over us at
Tate Modern's Rousseau retrospective as imperiously as a Velázquez monarch. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Nov 5, 2005 -
21 comments
Are you in the market for fine art? Have you considered
looking at Costco [Philly Enquirer link]? Last week, an original, authenticated Pablo Picasso sketch sold from their website for about $35,000. Currently you can purchase Mourlot edition lithographs by
Modigliani and
Chagall, as well as
prints from the Picasso Estate Collection with a click of your mouse. Would you trust Costco for your fine art purchases?
posted by ScottUltra
on Jan 25, 2005 -
10 comments
How I Met And Dated Miss Emily Dickinson: Have you ever wondered what a favourite writer really looked like? Is there any relationship between an artist's face and their art? Hemingway looks like his prose; Ezra Pound like his poetry; Picasso is a dead ringer for his paintings but, say, John Updike doesn't resemble his fiction; T.S.Eliot looks like a bank clerk and Matisse was nothing like his works. How superficial can you get? [
Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Jan 2, 2004 -
27 comments
The On-Line Picasso Project offers 6,893 works for your ogling pleasure, plus an obsessively documented chronological bio. I'm stunned.
(please read the user's manual, inside.)
posted by taz
on Oct 2, 2003 -
12 comments
