You're viewing everything posted on November 2, 2008
Soap Bubbles, or Young Man Blowing Bubbles, ca. 1734Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699–1779)Wentworth Fund, 1949 Metropolitan Museum of Art

Soap Bubbles, or Young Man Blowing Bubbles, ca. 1734
Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699–1779)
Wentworth Fund, 1949

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Richard Serra: The Matter of Time (Bilbao Guggenheim) Serra is 69 today! His monumental, and simultaneously minimalist, sculptures are amazing to walk around in…

Richard Serra: The Matter of Time (Bilbao Guggenheim)

Serra is 69 today! His monumental, and simultaneously minimalist, sculptures are amazing to walk around in…

Luchino Visconti, Italian film director, was born Nov. 2, 1906 (d. 1976)… Among his many sensitive studies of human psychology, perhaps none is finer than his adaptation of Death in Venice, where the homoerotic fascination buried in Thomas Mann’s novel is brought to the fore… (click thru for analysis)

Luchino Visconti, Italian film director, was born Nov. 2, 1906 (d. 1976)…

Among his many sensitive studies of human psychology, perhaps none is finer than his adaptation of Death in Venice, where the homoerotic fascination buried in Thomas Mann’s novel is brought to the fore…

(click thru for analysis)

Brilliant Italian conductor, Giuseppe Sinopoli, would have been 62 today… I remember the shock of hearing his death by heart-attack in the middle of a performance of Aîda, on April 20, 2001 (my birthday…) I had just seen him perform a superb concert staging of Puccini’s Turandot a few days before.

Brilliant Italian conductor, Giuseppe Sinopoli, would have been 62 today… I remember the shock of hearing his death by heart-attack in the middle of a performance of Aîda, on April 20, 2001 (my birthday…) I had just seen him perform a superb concert staging of Puccini’s Turandot a few days before.

Charismatic Canadian singer k.d. lang is 47 today… Her tribute to great Canadian songwriting, Hymns of the 49th Parallel is a respectful evocation of the ‘clearly Canadian’ sensibility in the work of Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Bruce Cockburn a.m.o. - who might to the uninformed be lumped in with the American tradition…

Charismatic Canadian singer k.d. lang is 47 today… Her tribute to great Canadian songwriting, Hymns of the 49th Parallel is a respectful evocation of the ‘clearly Canadian’ sensibility in the work of Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Bruce Cockburn a.m.o. - who might to the uninformed be lumped in with the American tradition…

Today marks the passing of openly gay Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini - creator of many strange and fantastic movies, including unorthodox versions of Medea, The Decameron and Canterbury Tales… Pasolini was brutally murdered in 1975 under circumstances still unclear …

Today marks the passing of openly gay Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini - creator of many strange and fantastic movies, including unorthodox versions of Medea, The Decameron and Canterbury Tales…

Pasolini was brutally murdered in 1975 under circumstances still unclear …

Born Nov. 2, 1933 (d. 2007) - Rex Clawson, colourful primitivist painter… Here: Mr. and Mrs. America (1969) Social and political satire with sexual overtones permeates Rex Clawson’s work. As a child in Dallas, Texas, he was influenced by graphic artist Jon Witcomb, Van Gogh, Gauguin and the Impressionists. Rex later won a fellowship to the Colorado Springs Art Centre, and went on to study for a year in Mexico. “In the early 1970’s, Clawson’s work was exhibited in several galleries in New York. A 1963 review in the New York Herald Tribune referred to his work as “reminiscent of primitive painting in which a story is told …(through) a symbolic image”. He had two one-man shows at the Royal Athena Gallery, 1963 - 1964 in which he satirized through art the politics of the day.” (Source)

Born Nov. 2, 1933 (d. 2007) - Rex Clawson, colourful primitivist painter…

Here: Mr. and Mrs. America (1969)

Social and political satire with sexual overtones permeates Rex Clawson’s work. As a child in Dallas, Texas, he was influenced by graphic artist Jon Witcomb, Van Gogh, Gauguin and the Impressionists. Rex later won a fellowship to the Colorado Springs Art Centre, and went on to study for a year in Mexico.

“In the early 1970’s, Clawson’s work was exhibited in several galleries in New York. A 1963 review in the New York Herald Tribune referred to his work as “reminiscent of primitive painting in which a story is told …(through) a symbolic image”. He had two one-man shows at the Royal Athena Gallery, 1963 - 1964 in which he satirized through art the politics of the day.” (Source)

Michael Mazur, American monotype print expert and champion, born Nov. 2, 1935 in New York… Here: Island in Moonlight, 1987  Click for high-res photo

Michael Mazur, American monotype print expert and champion, born Nov. 2, 1935 in New York… Here: Island in Moonlight, 1987 

Russion-born surrealist artist, Boris Margo, b. Nov. 2, 1902 (d. 1995) lived in New York City since 1930… Above, from the so-called Portfolio, No. 1: Lookout, 1942 Below: Dawn Dance, 1946 Ignes Fatui, 1945 Click for high-res photo

Russion-born surrealist artist, Boris Margo, b. Nov. 2, 1902 (d. 1995) lived in New York City since 1930…

Above, from the so-called Portfolio, No. 1: Lookout, 1942

Below:

Dawn Dance, 1946

Ignes Fatui, 1945

From the exhibition of Danish and International Surrealist art at Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj: Triumph of Desire Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen: Fertilization, 1933 “TRIUMPH OF DESIRE shows that to the Surrealists the world is a place where anything can be transformed into Surreal experiences and artworks. They are especially interested in the erotic currents they find in the subjects of nature and of the everyday. From grotesque, sexual scenarios to organic growths.” (Exhibition blurb)

From the exhibition of Danish and International Surrealist art at Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj:

Triumph of Desire

Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen: Fertilization, 1933

“TRIUMPH OF DESIRE shows that to the Surrealists the world is a place where anything can be transformed into Surreal experiences and artworks. They are especially interested in the erotic currents they find in the subjects of nature and of the everyday. From grotesque, sexual scenarios to organic growths.” (Exhibition blurb)

Wilhelm Freddie, the best Danish Surrealist painter: Envoy of the Dream, 1939 In the exhibit this canvas hangs next to Magritte’s In Memoriam Mack Sennett

Wilhelm Freddie, the best Danish Surrealist painter:

Envoy of the Dream, 1939

In the exhibit this canvas hangs next to Magritte’s In Memoriam Mack Sennett

Circle et Carré, 1922 - Danish Constructivism by Franciska Clausen, pupil of Léger, Hans Hofmann, and Moholy-Nagy… The title of the painting is also the name of the group of artists Clausen belonged to. Her work in this period is influenced by Mondrian and Arp… (source)

Circle et Carré, 1922 - Danish Constructivism by Franciska Clausen, pupil of Léger, Hans Hofmann, and Moholy-Nagy…

The title of the painting is also the name of the group of artists Clausen belonged to. Her work in this period is influenced by Mondrian and Arp…

(source)

Almost forgotten provocateur, the first Danish Surrealist (more properly a solitary Danish Dadaist) Eugéne de Sala (actual name Osvald Lykkebjerg Salomonsen, but as he said: “One’s name must sparkle like a jewel”)… Surrealist Composition, u.d. Sala (1899 - 1987) is the missing link between De Chirico, Cubism and Surrealism in Danish art. He was an eccentric, who liked to wear black nail polish, lipstick, powdered cheeks and green hair. When asked where he would situate himself within Danish art he responded, “Outside!” (Source Ove Bjørn Petersen - click thru for his Sala-retrospective with several other art-works reproduced) Click for high-res photo

Almost forgotten provocateur, the first Danish Surrealist (more properly a solitary Danish Dadaist) Eugéne de Sala (actual name Osvald Lykkebjerg Salomonsen, but as he said: “One’s name must sparkle like a jewel”)…

Surrealist Composition, u.d.

Sala (1899 - 1987) is the missing link between De Chirico, Cubism and Surrealism in Danish art. He was an eccentric, who liked to wear black nail polish, lipstick, powdered cheeks and green hair. When asked where he would situate himself within Danish art he responded, “Outside!” (Source Ove Bjørn Petersen - click thru for his Sala-retrospective with several other art-works reproduced)

Rita Kernn Larsen: Gul Komposition, u.d. Rita K.L. (1904 - 1998) was among the very few female Surrealist painters in Denmark and internationally. She studied with Legér (as did Franciska Clausen), and had her first solo exhibition in Denmark in 1934 (critics hailed her as ‘the female Picasso’). Her international contacts with Swedish Surrealists and during WW II (where she lived in London with her husband, Ukranian-born Isak Grünberg, who, being Jewish, had had to escape the Nazi occupation of Denmark) with exile circles of Belgian, French and other Scandinavian painters constantly prompted her to develop as an artist. The horrors of the War, where she experienced the London Blitz, led her to abandon Surrealism and initiate a realist turn in her art. Later yet she turned to abstraction. (Source: Birgit Hessellund: Rita Kernn-Larsen, 1995.) Click thru to see 3 other works by Kernn Larsen…

Rita Kernn Larsen: Gul Komposition, u.d.

Rita K.L. (1904 - 1998) was among the very few female Surrealist painters in Denmark and internationally. She studied with Legér (as did Franciska Clausen), and had her first solo exhibition in Denmark in 1934 (critics hailed her as ‘the female Picasso’). Her international contacts with Swedish Surrealists and during WW II (where she lived in London with her husband, Ukranian-born Isak Grünberg, who, being Jewish, had had to escape the Nazi occupation of Denmark) with exile circles of Belgian, French and other Scandinavian painters constantly prompted her to develop as an artist. The horrors of the War, where she experienced the London Blitz, led her to abandon Surrealism and initiate a realist turn in her art. Later yet she turned to abstraction. (Source: Birgit Hessellund: Rita Kernn-Larsen, 1995.)

Click thru to see 3 other works by Kernn Larsen…

Book binding for Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry by Marcel Duchamp and Mary Reynolds: “This binding is perhaps the best known and most successful of the collaborations between Reynolds and Duchamp. On November 26, 1934, Duchamp visited his close friend Henri-Pierre Roché in Arago and excitedly reported on a binding that he had just designed for Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi that Mary Reynolds was going to execute. Reynolds and Duchamp created out of the binding itself an extraordinarily clever pun. Both the front and back covers are cut-out “U’s” covered in rich earth tones; the spine is a soft caramel B. The endpapers are made of black moiré silk. A gold crown, signifying the puppet king, is imprinted on the front flyleaf and visible through the front cut-out “U”. The author’s name is imprinted in gold on the back flyleaf and is similarly visible through the back U. The binding spread open spells “UBU.” Reynolds must have spent considerable time executing this binding. We know from a letter from Duchamp, responding to a question from Katharine Kuh, that the binding was not completed until 1935. It is expertly and lovingly crafted. Both Duchamp and Reynolds were so pleased with the final work, that another copy was bound identically for the American collectors Walter and Louise Arensberg (Philadelphia Museum of Art).” (Text from the Mary Reynolds Collection) 

Book binding for Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry by Marcel Duchamp and Mary Reynolds:

“This binding is perhaps the best known and most successful of the collaborations between Reynolds and Duchamp. On November 26, 1934, Duchamp visited his close friend Henri-Pierre Roché in Arago and excitedly reported on a binding that he had just designed for Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi that Mary Reynolds was going to execute. Reynolds and Duchamp created out of the binding itself an extraordinarily clever pun. Both the front and back covers are cut-out “U’s” covered in rich earth tones; the spine is a soft caramel B. The endpapers are made of black moiré silk. A gold crown, signifying the puppet king, is imprinted on the front flyleaf and visible through the front cut-out “U”. The author’s name is imprinted in gold on the back flyleaf and is similarly visible through the back U. The binding spread open spells “UBU.” Reynolds must have spent considerable time executing this binding. We know from a letter from Duchamp, responding to a question from Katharine Kuh, that the binding was not completed until 1935. It is expertly and lovingly crafted. Both Duchamp and Reynolds were so pleased with the final work, that another copy was bound identically for the American collectors Walter and Louise Arensberg (Philadelphia Museum of Art).”

(Text from the Mary Reynolds Collection)