Atlas Shrugs

Take Five

Taking the night off ........... a moment to take five, sit back, pour yourself a smooth one.
Love! Music! Art! Hey, it's why I do what I do.

Vincent Van Gogh, Still Life with a Plate of Onions, 1889. Oil on canvas, 49.6 x 64.4 cm.

LONDON.- In January 2010, the Royal Academy of Arts will stage a landmark exhibition of the work of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). The focus of the exhibition will be the artist’s remarkable correspondence. Over 35 original letters, rarely exhibited to the public due to their fragility, will be on display in the main galleries of Burlington House, together with around 65 paintings and 30 drawings that express the principal themes to be found within the correspondence. Thus the exhibition will offer a unique opportunity to gain an ... More

And now for something different

Henri Matisse, Odalisque with a Tambourine, 1925-1926. Oil on canvas, 74,3 x 55,6 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. William S. Paley Collection, 1990.

An Open Art Thread ......

Image of three paintings at the exhibition "París 100 Years Ago", Collection from the Petit Palais in Geneva, which opened back in January in Burgos, in the CajaCirculo exhibition space.

 

Image of three paintings at the exhibition "París 100 Years From Now", Collection from the continent of Eurabia, which will open in a sharia compliant exhibition space.

Daughters of the Revolution

Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power

The Generals of the Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR Convention, Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C., October 15, 1963, © 2008 The Richard Avedon Foundation.

UPDATE: Van asked me why I ran this. I love it. Look at those faces. You can  see all the wars, all the soldiers, all the valor, all the glory, the sheer toughness. I can even see George Washington. Jefferson too. Old, great America.

Life's a beach ....

Richard Diebenkorn, Beach with Umbrellas,1958-59. Oil on composition board. Lent by the Santa Cruz Island Foundation. Credit: Santa Cruz Island Foundation. Photograph: William B.Dewey © Estate of Richard Diebenkorn.

It's a beautiful day, don't let it get away.

UPDATE: I'd dance with him ..... in  a heartbeat (hat tip Cindy)

iT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY -- DON'T LET IT GET AWAY

SUNNY DAY Joseph Mallord William Turner’s ‘Mortlake Terrace, the Seat of William Moffatt, Esq.; Summer’s Evening’ (exhibited 1827) is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current exhibition. (NY Sun)

Go, NOW  to the Met today for this excruciatingly beautiful Turner retrospective - Glorious, all of it. Turner is the master. No one captures light, nature, the wild of life like Turner ... Go, that is if you are not heading up into los montanas to visit the kinder :)

On the road ....

Great day for a road trip ..........enjoy. 

Above, Arnold Friedman, whose painting "Stoughton, Massachussets (Winding Road)" at the Adam Baumgold Gallery through Friday August 15th.  The Baumgold Gallery is presenting a group show,  "Road Works", focusing on roadways, paths, and thoroughfares. If you are in or around Manhattan, go. It's lovely.

Hit the road Jack.

An Infidel's Art Thread

Pieter Aertsen (1507/08 - 1575), Market Piece with Christ and the Adulteress, 1559 Oil on oakwood,

It's a Beautiful Day

Don't let it get away

The Fighting "Temeraire" tugged to her last berth to be broken up

John Mallord WilliamTurner (1775-1851)

Early Morning Art

Eva Gonzalès Morning Awakening  -"Le reveil" 1876 Paris

For Art's Sake

Vincent van Gogh, Blossoming Chestnut Branches, Oil on canvas. 72.5 x 91 cm. Painted in 1890 at Auvers-sur-Oise, De la Faille 820.

Overnight Art

"I want to be a tuneswept fiddle string that feels the master melody, and snaps..."

Amedeo Modigliani (bet you didn't know he was Jewish) I love his paintings. his love for women. They are all so beautiful and somber.  A tormented soul.... died at 35, impoverished.

Music: Le conseguenze dell'amore - Pasquale Catalano

"This is van Gogh's soul"

ATHENS, GREECE.- Greek writer Doreta Peppa found a sketchbook that is believed to belong to Vincent van Gogh. The sketchbook has portraits similar to thos found in Greece. Doreta Peppa is the daughter of a Greek resistance fighter. Doreta Peppa commissioned an art expert who found the sketched were made by Vincent van Gogh. Now Doreta Peppa seeks to establish the authenticity of the works with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

"Who would not be moved by such a discovery? This is van Gogh's soul," Peppa stated. "He intended this sketchbook as a gift and there is no other like it in the world." 

Art Thread .... She

Egon Schiele (1890-1918), Mutter und Kind (detail), signed with the initial and dated `S.10.' (lower right), gouache, watercolour and pencil on paper, 2Executed in 1910. Estimate: £1,500,000-2,000,000. © Christie's Images Ltd. 2008.

For Art's Sake

Man Ray, Portrait of Juliet, 1947

Pre-hajib,when a headress was, well ...... a head dress

Languishing on a Weekend Art Thread

Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967), Summer Interior, 1909, oil on canvas. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Josephine N. Hopper Bequest. © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper, licensed by the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Overnight Art Thread

Rene Magritte November 21, 1898 - My favorite Magritte is Son of Man (below). I discovered it in my late teens and it struck me as strangely erotic, very sexy. The whole Adam and Eve thing, yeah baby. Smart fun, all of it.

The name "Son of Man" is believed to have derived (from the Abrahamic creation story). The modern businessman is the son of Adam, and the apple represents temptation (with which one is still faced in the modern world).

Magritte was born in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut, A consummate technician, his work frequently displays a juxtaposition of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things.

The representational use of objects as other than what they seem is typified in his painting, The Treachery Of Images (La trahison des images), which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe, This is not a pipe (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), which seems a contradiction, but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. (In his book, This Is Not a Pipe, French critic Michel Foucault discusses the painting and its paradox.) Magritte pulled the same stunt in a painting of an apple: he painted the fruit realistically and then used an internal caption or framing device to deny that the item was an apple. In these Ceci n'est pas works, Magritte points out that no matter how closely, through realism-art, we come to depicting an item accurately, we never do catch the item itself: we cannot smoke tobacco with a picture of a pipe. Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on August 15, 1967 and was interred in Schaarbeek Cemetery, Brussels. (Wikipedia)

Happy Birthday Claude

Before we blogged, we Moneted. Another one of the greatest hits from the cradle of western civ ..........

November 14, 1840 - Monet was born on the fifth floor of 45 rue Laffitte, in the ninth arrondissement of Paris. Founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise.

In the 1880s and 1890s, Monet worked on "series" paintings, in which a subject was depicted in varying light and weather conditions. His first series exhibited as such was of Haystacks, painted from different points of view and at different times of the day. Fifteen of the paintings were exhibited at the Durand-Ruel in 1891. He later produced series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral, poplars, the Houses of Parliament, mornings on the Seine, and the water-lilies on his property at Giverny. Monet was exceptionally fond of painting controlled nature: his own garden in Giverny, with its water lilies, pond, and bridge. He also painted up and down the banks of the Seine. Monet died of lung cancer on December 5, 1926 at the age of 86 and is buried in the Giverny church cemetery. Monet had insisted that the occasion be simple; thus, only about fifty people attended the ceremony. (www.wikipedia.org)

The Archeologists

Giorgio de Chirico, The Archaeologists (detail), 1968, Oil on canvas, Signed lower right G. de Chirico 1968. © 2007 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome. © Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico, Rome. Inv. 94.

Throughout his life de Chirico maintained a personal and academic interest in Hellenic culture. Born in Volos, Greece in 1888 to Italian parents, he went on to study at the Athens Polytechnic and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. His debut in the art world took place in Paris in 1912. Most commonly known for having inspired Surrealism, de Chirico’s work also adopted Neo-Baroque influences. His bond with ancient Greece harmonized with his appreciation of classical Italian art. More here.

Appreciate it all before it's blown to smithereens

 

A Sunday Spoon

Lucian Freud’s Ib and Her Husband (detail), 1992. © Christie's Images Ltd 2007.

NEW YORK.-Christie’s New York will offer as one of the highlights of the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on November 13, Lucian Freud’s Ib and Her Husband, 1992, a deadly honest and deeply intriguing portrait of Freud’s daughter Isobel and her partner. The painting is expected to realize in excess of $15 million.  Isobel, Freud’s daughter, has featured in several of Freud’s paintings. She was already shown as a child in Large Interior, Paddington, painted in 1968-69...More

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. May you spoon the rest of your days ....... but most particularly your nights. Spoonless nights suck.

 

Sunday Art Lesson: Millais at the Tate

Millais Ophelia, John Everett Millais’s bewitching depiction of Hamlet’s sweetheart sinking to a watery death.

Ten things you never knew about Ophelia The Telegraph hat tip Wolf

In a delcious piece in The Telegraph,  Benjamin Secher reveals the roles of a tin bath, a straw hut and a deformed vole in the birth of Britain’s favorite painting. But go here and read the whole thing for a full point on point description of each small but wonderful revelation.

    Millais set his Ophelia in the Hogsmill River in Surrey It has adorned the walls of the Tate for most of the 110 years since the gallery opened, attracting millions of viewers to admire its forensic detail – and buy the postcard, which remains a runaway bestseller in the gallery shops.

As the painting takes centre stage in a new Tate exhibition of Millais’s work, here’s an alternative guide to some of the lesser known facts about his masterpiece.

1 Millais suffered for his art

2 Desperate times called for desperate measures

3 An animal vanished during the making of this picture

4 Ophelia caught a cold

5 Not everybody fell for Ophelia’s charms

6 In the 20th century, Salvador Dalí emerged as a surprise champion of the picture “

” 7 Ophelia is big in Japan

8 Millais sold the painting for 300 guineas

9 The artist didn’t always seem destined for greatness

10 The building where Ophelia was painted still stands

Sunday Very Open Art Thread

As promised ........ the Sunday Art Thread

Bert Stern, 1929, New York, Last Sitting – Marilyn Monroe, Taken 1962. Copyright-Stempel Bert Stern und Datierung von 2006.

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