Open Studios
Have you ever been to a real artist’s studio? If the answer is “no”, it’s high time to do this (if not for real, then at least virtually).
Anna Wilson-Patterson is pleased to invite you to a rare opportunity to see inside her Studio as part of South East Open Studios (named as one of the ’10 Things To Do’ in June, by Coast Magazine).
Meet Anna and her hounds and have a look at her paintings, exploring the haunting coastline between Hastings and Dungeness, featuring huts, boats and greyhounds. (Please click here for Anna’s E-Exhibition on Decor-Art and here for the interview.)
Anna painting
The Studio will be open 1st – 17th June Fri/Sat/Sun 9am – 5pm and other days by appointment.
One of Anna’s favourite subjects
If you’re still thinking what it would be like or won’t have an opportunity to attend, please click here for a short video featuring the artist and her friendly doggies.
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For more information visit Anna’s website – please click here.
Would you like to know it all? We would! That’s why the theme for our Know It All Section for 2012 is Artists’ Birthdays. We hope that these posts will help to increase our and your knowledge in Art History. Lets get acquainted with more painters, lets recognise their artwork and be inspired by the masterpieces!
Yaacov Agam (1928)
May the 11th is the day when you could be saying “happy Birthday” to Salvador Domènec Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989) or simply Salvador Dali, yet I have chosen to present another artist, that you might have not heard of (I certainly hadn’t). His artwork – sculptures, architectural structures and paintings might be far away from traditional art movements and styles, but let it be our chance to get acquainted with kinetic and optical art – meet Yaakov Agam.
A very short biography:
Yaakov Agam was born Yaakov Gipstein on May 11, 1928, in Rishon LeZion, then Mandate Palestine. His father, Yehoshua Gibstein, was a rabbi and a kabbalist.
Agam trained at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, before moving to Zürich, Switzerland in 1949, where he studied under Johannes Itten (1888–1967) at the Kunstgewerbe Schule, and was also influenced by the painter and sculptor Max Bill (1908–1994). In 1951 Agam went to Paris, France, where he still lives. He has a daughter and two sons, one of whom is the photographer Ron Agam.
Facade of Dan hotel, Tel Aviv, Israel, by Yaacov Agam
Artistic career:
Agam’s first solo exhibition was at the Galerie Graven in 1953, and he exhibited three works at the 1954 Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. He established himself as one of the leading pioneers of kinetic art at the Le Mouvement exhibition at the Galerie Denise René in 1955, alongside such artists as Jesús Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Díez, Pol Bury, Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely.
In 1964, Agam wrote his artistic credo, unchanged since then.
“My intention was to create a work of art which would transcend the visible, which cannot be perceived except in stages, with the understanding that it is a partial revelation and not the perpetuation of the existing. My aim is to show what can be seen within the limits of possibility which exists in the midst of coming into being.”
Agam’s work is usually abstract, kinetic art, with movement, viewer participation and frequent use of light and sound. His works are placed in many public places. His best known pieces include “Double Metamorphosis III” (1965), “Visual Music Orchestration” (1989) and fountains at the La Défense district in Paris (1975) and the “Fire and Water Fountain” in the Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv (1986).
Fountain in Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv, Israel
He is also known for a type of print known as an Agamograph, which uses lenticular printing to present radically different images, depending on the angle from which it is viewed. The lenticular technique was executed in large scale in the 30′ x 30′ (9.14 M x 9.14 M) “Complex Vision” (1969) which adorns the facade of the Callahan Eye Foundation Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama.
Yaacov Agam, Original Color Agamograph, Mirage from Never Before Suite, 1985
Agam had a retrospective exhibition in Paris at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in 1972, and at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1980, among others. His works are held in numerous museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.
He is the subject of two documentary films by American filmmaker Warren Forma: “Possibilities of Agam” (1967) and “Agam and…” (1980).
In 1996 he was awarded the Jan Amos Comenius Medal by UNESCO for the “Agam Method” for visual education of young children.
In 1999 he designed and created the winner’s trophy for the Eurovision Song Contest which was held in Jerusalem.
In 2005, he was voted the 195th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.
Yaacov Agam and his Peaceful Communication for the World
In 2009, at age 81, Agam created a monument for the World Games in Kaohsiung, Taiwan titled “Peaceful Communication with the World”. It consists of nine 10m high hexagon pillars positioned in diamond or square formation. The sides of the pillars are painted in different patterns and hues, totaling more than 180 shades. One side of each pillar is also lined to segment the structure into sections, so that children’s perception of the pillar will change as they grow, because they will see a different pillar at a different height.
One of Agam’s more notable creations is the Hanukkah Menorah at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in New York City, sponsored by the Lubavitch Youth Organization. The 32-foot-high, gold colored, 4,000 pound steel structure is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the World’s Largest Hanukkah Menorah. It uses real oil lamps, which are lighted every year during Hanukkah, with the aid of cherry-picking machines.
Yaacov Agam’s the Hanukkah Menorah
Agam is one of the highest-selling Israeli artists. In a Sotheby’s New York auction in November 2009, when his “4 Themes Contrepoint” was sold for $326,500, he said: “This does not amaze me … My prices will go up, in keeping with the history I made in the art world.” A year later, his “Growth”, an outsize kinetic painting done in oil on a wood panel, which was shown at the 1980 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, estimated at $150,000 to $250,000, sold for the record-breaking sum of $698,000.
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P.S. Kinetic art is art that contains moving parts or depends on motion for its effect. The moving parts are generally powered by wind, a motor or the observer. Kinetic art encompasses a wide variety of overlapping techniques and styles.
Op art, also known as optical art, is a style of visual art that makes use of optical illusions.
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Information for this post found on Wikipedia.
100 Interiors Around the World
I might have quite a few weaknesses, but I will let you know only one – pretty interiors. I’m always glued to magazines picturing beautiful houses, their colourful gardens and cozy rooms; dreaming of places I would love to own and what I would turn them into… Be it a restaurant, a tiny shop or, even better, a gallery – I’ve already formed an image what all these might look like.
My interior design books and magazines take up a lot of space, but there’s always room for one more; this time actually for two more – 2 volumes of 100 Interiors Around the World published by one of my favourite publishers Taschen. (Please click here to visit their website.)
The Cover
How to Live Well: A diverse and enticing selection of interiors around the world
“This TASCHEN 25 Edition rounds up some of today’s most exceptional and inspiring interiors on six continents. Making stops in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, the painstakingly chosen and sumptuously photographed selection of 100 interiors represents a global spectrum of contemporary styles, from rustic minimalism to urbane eclecticism. What unites these dwellings is authenticity, a love of detail, and a zest for individual expression that will never go out of fashion.”
Here are some images to whet your appetite:
I don’t think I will sleep well before these two books are on my shelves…
Just Birds
How many birds can you “get” in one day? Obviously quite a lot, if you visit a park.
The more trees, the more birds, who want to sing their songs to the world… I’m not a bird watcher, but I must admit that spring would be lacking a lot of its beauty without their jolly tweets.
That Magic Word – Marketing
A week ago, on one of the blogs I read, I stumbled upon a useful post on marketing ideas. It got me wondering – how much time does an average artist spend on his/her computer trying to promote their work? I must admit I spend at least a couple of hours most days (sometimes this couple turns into much more than “a few”!). It is getting annoying as this is the time that I could be hmm… using to actually improve my skills – taking more photographs, painting…. Well, I’m sure you get the idea.
Still, we all must live on something and I’m afraid that, if you want to earn some money, you have to take action.
Here’s something you can start with.
If you click on this link you will be taken to a website called Artists Helping Artists, where you will find loads of information and advice on marketing your artwork. What’s good about this website – they have a Blog Radio, so you can listen to some of their recorded shows, while working on something else (I’m sure such multitasking isn’t only for women). There you will find Ten Ways to Jump Start Your Art Career, Using Pininterest to Sell Your Art (I’m not sure about Pininterest as they seem to be cleverly “stealing” images or so I heard on several blogs I read), Top Apps for Artists and many more related topics.
The lady, who is behind all this – Leslie Seata (a professional artist), can offer hundreds of tips, but I’d like to share just a few that I thought I might actually give a try:
1. Create e-books that people can download from your website or blog for free. If you struggle to pick interesting topics you can simply use the most popular posts on your blog.
2. Start selling quality prints of your artwork.
3. Leave comments on other blogs – the more, the better.
4. Create a Twitter account and “tweet”.
5. Compile an art buying guide for beginners and, of course, don’t forget to include your artwork.
6. Join Google +
7. Team up with another artist.
8. Find some place locally where you could exhibit your artwork for free (for e.g. furniture shop or hairdressers).
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Maybe you’re already doing some of this? Does it work? We’d be glad to hear what you think!
May = Sun + Colours (2 Desktop Images)
I get less and less time to spend on my computer – it feels somehow reckless to stay indoors on a sunny day and we seem to be getting quite a lot of these now! Most of the trees have turned light green, others will be in bloom probably by the end of this week – nature has lost it’s boring cloak and has put on a bright new cover. I couldn’t agree more with James Thomson:
“Among the changing months, May stands confest The sweetest, and in fairest colors dressed.”
With all these colours around us it’s definitely high time to start spring plein air sessions (En plein air – a French expression which means “in the open air”, and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors, which is also called peinture sur le motif (“painting on the ground”) in French). I wish I had more time for everything, as being a keen gardener I have to give my plot a kick start weeding and planting seedlings, that have been covering my windows for the last few months, but I’m sure that I will paint a few landscapes soon… very soon – I can’t wait!
Anyway, I’m leaving you with two bright May desktop images (please click on the image to see its full version, then right click and choose the “save picture as…” option to download it onto your computer); now get ouside and soak up some light, we all need vitamin D!
P.S. Don’t forget to visit our latest E-Exhibition – Stephen Mitchell and his Threads of Light.
Artists and Dates – Édouard Manet and April the 30th
Édouard Manet (1832 - 1883)
I might have neglected this blog for a while as the good weather couldn’t be wasted sitting indoors, yet there was no way I was going to miss posting something on the 30th of April, especially when I found out that Édouard Manet was born on this day (me too!), BUT… it seems the website, I found this information on made a MISTAKE – he was born on January the 23rd, 1832, yet he died on the 30th of April, 1883. It’s really sad to talk about someone dying, but I absolutely adore one of Manet’s latest paintings (if you’re reading this, Sandra, Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère, would be somewhere at the top of my 10 Favourite Paintings list), so I decided to still post something about this French painter today. To make everything less complicated as it already is I chose to share some very pretty images and a very brief “explanation” on who Manet was (if you get a chance to read his full biography, you should definitely do it):
Manet, who was classically trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, rejected historical painting to experiment with new techniques. He in turn, was consistantly rejected by the Salon. He was a founding father of Impressionism and was a crucial part of the famous Salon des Refusés in 1863.
Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe. 1863
Le Départ de Folkestone. 1869
En Bateau. 1874
Une Botte d'Asperges. 1880
Un Bar aux Folies-Bergères. 1881/82
Information for this post was found on: arthistory.about.com and p.giroud.free.fr
