KNOW|YOUR|ART

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MARLENE DUMAS | “Suikerspook” | 1996 With no more than a splash of running ink, Dumas conjures up this being on a sheet of paper: a long-legged woman straining at the limits of her self-made cage. Ensnared in confines of her own making, she considers us thoughtfully. Her gaze is hollow and dark, her body no more than a pose. Dumas never lets her guard down to the plastic perfection of the world of advertising and fashion. Averse to anything resembling a universal ideal of beauty, she believes that every woman is able to invent her own identity. [x]

MARLENE DUMAS | “Suikerspook” | 1996

With no more than a splash of running ink, Dumas conjures up this being on a sheet of paper: a long-legged woman straining at the limits of her self-made cage. Ensnared in confines of her own making, she considers us thoughtfully. Her gaze is hollow and dark, her body no more than a pose. Dumas never lets her guard down to the plastic perfection of the world of advertising and fashion. Averse to anything resembling a universal ideal of beauty, she believes that every woman is able to invent her own identity. [x]

DONALD JUDD | “Untitled” (Six Boxes) | 1974 In the early 1960’s, Donald Judd switched from painting to sculpture and started to develop an interest in architecture. Judd challenged the artistic convention of originality by using industrial processes and materials—such as steel, concrete, and plywood—to create large, hollow Minimalist sculptures, mostly in the form of boxes, which he arranged in repeated simple geometric forms. [x] Judd saw the beauty inherent in raw, controversial industrial materials and challenged the conventional art establishment norm of what mediums were acceptable in sculpture in the 60’s and 70’s. He paved the way for many other future industrial and architectural sculptors. “It takes a great deal of time and thought to install work carefully. This should not always be thrown away. Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again. Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be. Somewhere, just as the platinum iridium meter guarantees the tape measure, a strict measure must exist for the art of this time and place.”  —Donald Judd [x]

DONALD JUDD | “Untitled” (Six Boxes) | 1974

In the early 1960’s, Donald Judd switched from painting to sculpture and started to develop an interest in architecture. Judd challenged the artistic convention of originality by using industrial processes and materials—such as steel, concrete, and plywood—to create large, hollow Minimalist sculptures, mostly in the form of boxes, which he arranged in repeated simple geometric forms. [x]

Judd saw the beauty inherent in raw, controversial industrial materials and challenged the conventional art establishment norm of what mediums were acceptable in sculpture in the 60’s and 70’s. He paved the way for many other future industrial and architectural sculptors.

“It takes a great deal of time and thought to install work carefully. This should not always be thrown away. Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again. Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be. Somewhere, just as the platinum iridium meter guarantees the tape measure, a strict measure must exist for the art of this time and place.”  —Donald Judd [x]

MICHAEL HEIZER | “City” | 1972-Present

“You just don’t get it, do you? This is a czarist nation, a fascist state. They control everything. They tap my phone. They’ll do anything to stop me. We’re the front lines, man, fleas fighting a giant.” —Michael Heizer [x]

At eighty feet high, a quarter of a mile wide, and one and a quarter miles long, the sculpture “City” is roughly the scale of the national mall in Washington, D.C., making the artwork, located in Garden Valley, Nevada, one of the largest sculptures ever created. The sculpture is so large that when the energy department did a survey flyover of the area, they mistook it for a military project.

Begun in 1972 by artist Michael Heizer, this “earthwork” is made entirely of dirt, rocks, and concrete, constructed with heavy machinery. Heizer is renowned for his large-scale sculptures and earth art, and produces works that cannot fit into a conventional museum setting, except in photographs.

Earthworks and other unsellable “land art” like this were a reaction to the commercialization of art in the 1960s. Heizer came up with the idea for “City” in 1970, when he was in the Yucatan studying the serpent motif in the ball court at Chichen Itza. He was 24. His work is quickly recognized as the archetype of what people were beginning to call Land Art.

It made a huge impact.

In his words, City “is based on an awareness that we live in a nuclear era. We’re probably living at the end of civilization.” [x]

(Source: knowyourartworld, via isxbelle)

GUSTAV KLIMT | Adele Bloch-Bauer I | 1907

GUSTAV KLIMT | Adele Bloch-Bauer I | 1907

(Source: isxbelle)

EDVARD MUNCH | ”Madonna” | 1895 Born in Scandinavia, a region known for long periods of cold and darkness, Edvard Munch shared the Symbolist mentality of artists and writers from that locale and throughout Europe in the 1890’s. He rejected the Impressionist practice of studying effects of light on the external world and instead looked inward to explore themes of love and jealousy, loneliness and anxiety, and sickness and death. His personal history, with the premature loss of his mother and an older sister, as well as complex and unsatisfactory entanglements with women, provided him with a constant source of artistic motifs. [x] “The femme fatale reflects a gender confusion as women break out of the domestic confines of the home and move more into the workforce after the Industrial Revolution. Fears of a breakdown on the homefront in terms of the family unit lead to fears of women’s newfound freedom and especially fears of an unleashed female sexuality. The femme fatale reflects those cultural fears. This Madonna is a fully sexualized woman—once again an example of nature eroticized rather than spiritualized. This was during the age of Freud and the discovery of the unconscious and the sexual drives that lurk in all of us, such as Eros and Thanatos—Freud’s coupling of sexuality and death urges.” [x]

EDVARD MUNCH | ”Madonna” | 1895

Born in Scandinavia, a region known for long periods of cold and darkness, Edvard Munch shared the Symbolist mentality of artists and writers from that locale and throughout Europe in the 1890’s. He rejected the Impressionist practice of studying effects of light on the external world and instead looked inward to explore themes of love and jealousy, loneliness and anxiety, and sickness and death. His personal history, with the premature loss of his mother and an older sister, as well as complex and unsatisfactory entanglements with women, provided him with a constant source of artistic motifs. [x]

“The femme fatale reflects a gender confusion as women break out of the domestic confines of the home and move more into the workforce after the Industrial Revolution. Fears of a breakdown on the homefront in terms of the family unit lead to fears of women’s newfound freedom and especially fears of an unleashed female sexuality. The femme fatale reflects those cultural fears. This Madonna is a fully sexualized woman—once again an example of nature eroticized rather than spiritualized. This was during the age of Freud and the discovery of the unconscious and the sexual drives that lurk in all of us, such as Eros and Thanatos—Freud’s coupling of sexuality and death urges.” [x]

FRANCISCO GOYA Y LUCIENTES | “The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters” | 1798 Although Goya is not a contemporary artist, this is one of the most important prints in the history of European art. This particular print from an 80 print series “typically appears in art history textbooks and depicts the artist with his head cradled, face down in his arms, resting on a table with his drawing tools around him. Owls, bats and monsters swarm over him, while a wide-eyed cat is on the floor next to him. According to a bit of late-18th-century iconography, owls represented folly; bats stood for ignorance; cats were signs of witchcraft—one can easily see how Goya’s image captures confusion in an age of flux. Is he celebrating Enlightenment reason, or Romantic irrationality? Does he believe in the individual’s ability to act, or is he telling us to duck and cover and come back when the coast is clear?” [x] Goya wrote on one of the preparatory drawings for this print, “The author is dreaming. His only intention is to banish harmful superstition and to perpetuate with this work of fancy the sound testimony of Truth.” Read more here.

FRANCISCO GOYA Y LUCIENTES | “The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters” | 1798

Although Goya is not a contemporary artist, this is one of the most important prints in the history of European art. This particular print from an 80 print series “typically appears in art history textbooks and depicts the artist with his head cradled, face down in his arms, resting on a table with his drawing tools around him. Owls, bats and monsters swarm over him, while a wide-eyed cat is on the floor next to him. According to a bit of late-18th-century iconography, owls represented folly; bats stood for ignorance; cats were signs of witchcraft—one can easily see how Goya’s image captures confusion in an age of flux. Is he celebrating Enlightenment reason, or Romantic irrationality? Does he believe in the individual’s ability to act, or is he telling us to duck and cover and come back when the coast is clear?” [x]

Goya wrote on one of the preparatory drawings for this print, “The author is dreaming. His only intention is to banish harmful superstition and to perpetuate with this work of fancy the sound testimony of Truth.”

Read more here.

darksilenceinsuburbia: Leilani Bustamante. Opening this Saturday, March 10th from 6-10 PM is a new group show entitled Wayward Fairy Tales. Curated by Jeff Felker and Glenn Arthur, this show will feature work by Jason Levesque, Leilani Bustamante, Chelsea Greene, Glenn Arthur, Kelly Castillo, Ahren Hertel, Aunia Kahn, and Jeff Felker. Each artist will be presenting their rendition of classic fairy tales. We’re all used to the “happily ever after” ideal, but this show will set out to prove that “beautiful tragedies” can be just as amazing. This exhibition runs until April 7th, so if you can’t be there for the reception make sure to stop by when you can. (by josh) Modern Eden Gallery http://www.leilanibustamante.com/

darksilenceinsuburbia:

Leilani Bustamante.

Opening this Saturday, March 10th from 6-10 PM is a new group show entitled Wayward Fairy Tales. Curated by Jeff Felker and Glenn Arthur, this show will feature work by Jason Levesque, Leilani Bustamante, Chelsea Greene, Glenn Arthur, Kelly Castillo, Ahren Hertel, Aunia Kahn, and Jeff Felker. Each artist will be presenting their rendition of classic fairy tales. We’re all used to the “happily ever after” ideal, but this show will set out to prove that “beautiful tragedies” can be just as amazing. This exhibition runs until April 7th, so if you can’t be there for the reception make sure to stop by when you can. (by josh)

Modern Eden Gallery

http://www.leilanibustamante.com/

LUCIEN FREUD |“Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” | 1992 Lucian Freud became the most expensive living artistat auction in 2008 with this painting. The large naked woman painted on a couch is called “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” and sold for $33.6 million. The sitter is named Sue Tilley and she sat for Freud over a four year period. The artist held the title of “Most Expensive Living Painter” until his death on July 20th, 2011. Freud’s paintings are very unique; each masterpiece portraying in elegant form the gritty aspects of everyday life—his everyday life. Freud’s paintings are stunning snapshots of life. [x]

LUCIEN FREUD |“Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” | 1992

Lucian Freud became the most expensive living artistat auction in 2008 with this painting. The large naked woman painted on a couch is called “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” and sold for $33.6 million. The sitter is named Sue Tilley and she sat for Freud over a four year period.

The artist held the title of “Most Expensive Living Painter” until his death on July 20th, 2011. Freud’s paintings are very unique; each masterpiece portraying in elegant form the gritty aspects of everyday life—his everyday life. Freud’s paintings are stunning snapshots of life. [x]

JANINE ANTONI | “Rawhide” | 2000 “…I was doing work that was about process, about the meaning of the making, trying to have a love-hate relationship with the object. I always feel safer if I can bring the viewer back to the making of it. I try to do that in a lot of different ways, by residue, by touch, by these processes that are basic to all of our lives… that people might relate to in terms of process… everyday activities—bathing, eating, etc. But there are times when the best way to keep people in that place, which for me is so alive and pertinent, is to show the process or the making.” —Janine Antoni [x]

JANINE ANTONI | “Rawhide” | 2000

“…I was doing work that was about process, about the meaning of the making, trying to have a love-hate relationship with the object. I always feel safer if I can bring the viewer back to the making of it. I try to do that in a lot of different ways, by residue, by touch, by these processes that are basic to all of our lives… that people might relate to in terms of process… everyday activities—bathing, eating, etc. But there are times when the best way to keep people in that place, which for me is so alive and pertinent, is to show the process or the making.” —Janine Antoni [x]