Remembering Jeanne-Claude

Cover of the book about Jeanne-Claude and Christo's project for Central Park, titled On The Way To The Gates

Jeanne-Claude, half of the Jeanne-Claude and Christo artist-partnership, known for creating environmental installations such as The Gates in Central Park, passed away last week at the age of seventy-four.

In addition to The Gates, their past works include the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris, and a 24-mile-long artwork called Running Fence in California.

Christo will continue their current project, Over The River, an installation that will canopy the Arkansas River in Colorado. See the work that they began together on the project’s web site, here:

http://www.overtheriverinfo.com/page_1

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Their partnership is described in this touching article on Art Beast with a wonderful image gallery featuring many of their beautiful installation works:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-26/remembering-jeanne-claude/

The Old King

The Carnegie Museum of Art is fortunate to have Georges Rouault's most significant expressionist painting in its collection, The Old King. The identity of the king is unspecified, but it is suspected to be King Herod.

When Georges Rouault was a young man, he had an apprenticeship in a glazier's shop restoring medieval stained glass. This experience influenced his later expressionist painting style using luminous colors and strong black outlines, similar in appearance to stained glass. This style is epitomized in the painting of The Old King.

Happy Thanksgiving

This painting by Norman Rockwell has become a very familiar image of Thanksgiving. The painting is titled Freedom From Want and is part of Rockwell's Four Freedoms Series. The series is based on the four freedoms described in a speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as inspiring as ever. Excerpt:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.


Listen to audio of Roosevelt and read the whole inspiring speech here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrthefourfreedoms.htm

P.S. Here is a photo I took a few years ago of Norman Rockwell's studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, when we went to visit the Norman Rockwell Museum:

LIKENESS

Dr. Elaine King's lecture following the tour of the exhibit Likeness: Transformations of Portrayal After Warhol at the Mattress Factory was very interesting and enriching! (See the description of this exhibit in my previous post.) She dicussed the evolution of portraiture over art history, and new ways contemporary artists are exploring the genre. At the end of her lecture, where the first slide was a self-portrait of Rembrandt and she had taken us step by step through Warhol, through postmodernism up to today, she predicted that new inventions within the genre would come from artists using new technologies.

If you missed the curator's lecture and still go to see the exhibit, be sure to pick up the exhibit guide at the front desk. It includes an introduction to the exhibit by Elaine King, as well as her thoughtful descriptions of the artists and their works.

LIKENESS @ the Mattress Factory

LIKENESS is a group exhibition that examines human depiction during a post-Warholian era in which new technology has played an influential role. It includes the work of artists Jim Campbell, Paul DeMarinis, Jonn Herschend, Nikki Lee, Joseph Mannino, Greta Pratt and Tony Oursler. Elaine A. King, who is a freelance critic and curator as well as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University teaching Art History/Theory/Museum Studies, guest-curates the exhibition.

Tonight I am attending a tour and curator's talk at the Mattress Factory about this exhibit. I am particularly excited because Dr. Elaine King, the curator, was one of my most influential professors at Carnegie Mellon University. I had an independent study with her about portraiture, and she really opened my mind to contemporary artists exploring portraiture in new ways. I am thrilled to get to see this exhibit tonight, and listen to her discussion!

CURATOR TALK: Elaine A. King
Human Portrayal: A Shifting Conglomerate of Media & Social Values
Thursday, November 19, 2009
7:00 PM (Guided tour of LIKENESS at 6:00 PM)$10
(MF members, PIT + CMU FREE w/ I.D.)

Nests, Rhizomes, Seeds

709 Penn Gallery

Nests, Rhizomes, Seeds encompasses the work of four women artists and educators living and working in the Pittsburgh area: JoAnna Commandaros, Anna Divinsky, Karen Page and Holland Williams. In this exhibit they examine nests and root formations through drawing, painting, and manipulating a tactile surface. Each piece is a testament to each artist’s personal sensitivity to nature, color, and texture.

The exhibit also focuses on an interactive, public art installation created with students from the University of Pittsburgh, Slippery Rock University and CAPA High School. The audience is invited to select varied organic linoleum carvings produced by the students to create root drawings through planting seeds in the beds of the carvings. These wheat grass seeds will be overlaid with cheesecloth and watered, in turn, producing unusual shapes that mimic the pattern of the carved linoleum. The resulting rhizome growth drawings will then be added to the ever-growing installation.

Nests, Rhizomes, Seeds weaves the symbiotic relationship of natural processes with visual language, demonstrating the creative bond between four women artists and educators, their students, and the Pittsburgh community. Come to the gallery and contribute to the installation by planting some seeds.

November 13 through December 31, 2009 (First Night Pittsburgh)
Reception: Friday, December 4, 2009, 6-8 pm

Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday, 12-8pm & Saturday, 12-6pm

709 Penn Avenue, Downtown Pittsburgh

Portrait in progress

I still have quite a lot to do on the dress, the cabinet, and the background, but this new portrait is coming along. I'd say I'm 3/4 of the way there. The face at least is finished. Photo taken at an angle unfortunately... (click above photo to enlarge, and click again to zoom)