It’s with a palpable sadness that we observe the passing of a great American artist, Kenneth Price. Born in February 16, 1935, he lived a fruitful 77 years, passing away on February 24, 2012 after a long battle with throat and tongue cancer. Price was well known for his ceramic sculptures and prints, which reflected his diverse views and inspirations, from the urban environments of Los Angeles to the Mexican folk poetry that would come to dominate his later artwork. His Mexican era was a subtle shift from his more typical work, which consisted mostly of abstract shapes constructed from fired clay, unglazed and intricately painted with layers of paint. Price was born in Los Angeles, California and he would stay in his native state for his education, attending the Chouinard Art Institute before moving to the University of Southern California in 1956, where he received his BFA degree. He later returned to the Chouinard Art Institute in 1957 for further study, before moving to the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1959, where he received his MFA degree. Notably, Price studied ceramics with Peter Voulkos, who was a key mentor. It was during his New... Read more

Yesterday’s post talked about the great Italian artist Alighiero Boetti and the impact he had on a whole generation of Italian painters, art in Italy and the global art scene. The first half of this post will finish our summary of his artwork, while the second half will let you know the best place to see his work (psst – it’s the Tate Modern, which is holding a new retrospective). But more on that later, oh sneaky parenthesis. We’re going to look at the period known simply as 1972-1994, where Boetti disassociated himself from the Arte Povera movement and moved to Rome. This period is interesting because the artist renames himself as Alighiero e Boetti (“Alighiero and Boetti”). Why? Well, artists are notoriously self-reflective creatures, much like the way Degas, Mondrian and Rembrandt all changed their names at one stage or the other. But Boetti had a specific goal in mind: he wanted to truly and wholly reflect the clashing factors in his work: error and perfection, order and disorder and finally, the individual and society. Such motifs can be seen in the work Ordine e Disordine which in English means Order and Disorder or Order is Disorder, and Fuso... Read more

It was a good thing Italian artist Alighiero Boetti ignored a potential career as a cartographer instead choosing to become an artist. Hah – we’re only kidding about the cartographer part. He was well known for his maps and certainly the Italian artist is considered one of the foremost painters in the modern era, which is a big accolade considering the wealth of talent, both historical and contemporary. We’re going to take a more in-depth look at the man, his life and the artwork and impact he left behind. Boetti was born in Turin in 1940, the son of a lawyer and violinist. His early educational years focused on law and business – he would study the latter at the University of Turin for a year, before quitting to work and study as an artist. Unlike the greats of modern art such as Picasso, Boetti was from all accounts not an immensely gifted drawer or painter. He had, rather, an inquisitive mind and an ability to meld all the social sciences together, much like Kandinsky before him. From an early age he read and studied many theoretical interests, including alchemy, philosophy, physics and esoterics. This taste for the alternative is... Read more

We noted a couple of weeks ago the political situation in Burma, or Myanmar, whichever one you’d like to call it. Positive steps for the liberalisation of the country in the political realm only mean positive things for the economy and, more importantly, artists and the cultural sphere. We’re now seeing early reports that artists are starting to feel more inspired, while they’re also hoping more tourists and visitors will help increase the value of their oil paintings and other artwork. Hey, they have to eat, and when the average price of a painting is stuck at USD$350 for the past 10 years or so, you’d really want the same thing. Not much up-to-date information exists about the Burmese contemporary art scene since the crackdown on freedom in the country in the successive military coups, but some news has leaked out to the outside world. The leading and most well known painter currently is Lun Gywe, who was born in 1930 and has achieved popularity, especially in Asia. Lun Gywe is a bit of a Burmese Gustav Klimt – he loves to use gold, paints with bright colours and often features oil paintings that feature beautiful women. Another leading artist... Read more

Artists should, by definition, dare to challenge the status quo. Think of some of the greatest artworks in history and you’ll no doubt find they all challenged norms and conventions in some way. The birth of modern art was brought about in many ways by Kandinsky, who refused to accept the norms of continental European art as he paved the way for the earliest form of Abstract paintings. Likewise the Impressionists, who refused to be cowed by the Paris Salon and other art critics who derided their method and movement as nothing more than a joke, but can the same apply for performance artists? Can they rise above and challenge the status quo? One Kansas artist tried, but got promptly shut down in the face of overwhelming legal opposition and what we would say is simply weird and illogical thinking. We are talking about the proposed performance art piece of Amber Hansen, who wanted to exhibit “The Story of Chickens: A Revolution” at her local art gallery, known as the Percolator Art Gallery. Her idea? It was simple – Hansen believed that society had become removed from their meat and didn’t understand the whole process of chicken birth to table... Read more

If you haven’t heard or seen the paintings of Chilean artist Victor Castillo, who was born in 1973, it is time to get off your high horse and read the rest of this blog post, at the very least. Castillo was born in the nation’s capital, Santiago, where he grew up and attended art school. It is not clear if he graduated from art school, but what is known is that he was disappointed in the experience and then chose to join the independent art collective Caja Negra, where he started to make mixed media sculpture and video installations. He did this for several years before moving to Barcelona, Spain, in 2004, where like so many others before him he started to copy the masters, in particular Goya and shift to canvas artwork. But simply copying doesn’t render an artist great, or improve his artwork. By definition new work has to be produced and the 20th century artwork of cartoons and comic books became an important aspect of his work. Castillo notably mixes the timeless and classic style of the Spanish old world masters with animation – a nearly Disney on Ice (the bad type of Ice) effect which renders... Read more

World War II was an event that not only decimated human life, economies and the environment, but one that also rendered thousands of paintings lost to time immortal. Sure, plenty of famous oil paintings were pilfered from museums, with some burned or destroyed in subsequent fighting, while others made their way to hidden collections where they probably still lie. Another impact of World War II is on the artists themselves, and the work that would never be produced and the movements that would never be launched. Then there are the monuments themselves: what about the artefacts that will forever force us to wonder how humanity could stoop so low? One odd example is the current debate between U.S. and Polish officials over the fate of a barracks which once housed Jewish prisoners at the notorious Nazis Auschwitz death camp. The barracks – a full building, that is – is now on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMW), but Poland now wants it back after it was initially loaned out more than 20 years ago. It would seem an open and shut case, wouldn’t it? I lend it to you, and you have to give it back to... Read more

What a dapper lad German Expressionist painter August Macke was. Born on January 3, 1887, in Meschede, Germany, the young painter was in many ways the tragic story of a talent cut short during his prime in the German and Russian expressionist movements that changed the world. Macke was one of the leading members of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter, of which Kandinsky was one of the leaders, before he died in 1914 during World War I. His early death reinforced the legacy of his avant-garde genius, even though his oeuvre is numerically limited due to his short career. Macke only lived until 27, but the years were packed with artistic travels and endeavours. The artist was born the son of a  builder and a farmer, meaning drawing wasn’t technically in his blood, when, say, compared to the likes of Diego Rivera or Picasso, who could claim creative ancestors. Nevertheless, after his formative years in Brüsseler Strasse, he moved to Bonn where he studied painting, before several artistic working trips to Lake Thun in Switzerland, Paris, Italy, the Netherlands and Tunisia. It was in Paris that he would encounter the Impressionist paintings for the first time in 1907,... Read more

Sometimes an art exhibition or gallery opening will literally draw hundreds and stop people dead in their tracks. We’re talking about the type of images that people turn their heads to see while walking, or, stop completely to gawk at. The same effect can be produced by an eye-grabbing cover photo on the front of a magazine or newspaper – just ask anyone who tracks these sales, and the one thing they’ll tell you is that a good image can literally be worth millions of dollars. One man associated with million dollar photos is Marco Glaviano, the Italian born photographer (in 1942) who has been a leading figure in fashion photography. But is his work art? If the likes of Picasso had his muses and models and he painted them on canvas and produced art, is a photo of supermodels printed on paper art? Well, we won’t tackle that hairy chestnut, but let’s just say Glaviano has more than his share of some of the most divine muses the world has to offer, including supermodels Paulina Porizkova, Eva Herzigova and Cindy Crawford. Glaviano is not just a fantastic photographer, but he’s also an artist who has been developing the medium... Read more

In case you missed the biggest tech-financial story in history, Facebook is planning an initial public offering – previously private stocks will go public, enabling the company to sell more stock and raise more capital. Existing privately held stock is also set to explode, creating hundreds of instant millionaires around the world (as we are told). Now, while many programmers, coders, graphic artists, management-suit types and other geeks stand to make a wheelbarrow sized – or perhaps hummer-sized would be more appropriate – amount of money, most of the media attention has focused on one artist who painted murals on the walls of Facebook when it was first starting out. As the speculation spread, it became clear that this artist will become one of the richest in the U.S.A. His name, in case you missed the articles, is David Choe. David Choe was born in 1976 in Los Angeles, California, and is known primarily as an American painter, muralist and graffiti artist who produces work in his “dirty style” figure paintings. The style is as the name suggests, in both inspiration and execution: Choe paints fast and frankly, in some ways like Pollock’s drip painting of frenetic splashes of colour... Read more

Every once in a while we like to highlight the work of an artist who left an indelible mark on art history. Sometimes their oil paintings left such a significant impact that they became household names: Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh and Da Vinci are some examples of superstar artists. Others didn’t have such a large impact, but nevertheless left changes that were worthy of examination in their own right. Take, for example, William N. Copley, born January 24, 1919 to May 7, 1996. Copley, more popularly known as CPLY, was a writer, painter, collector, publisher, art entrepreneur and patron to the art world who forever has a place in American and world history, especially in the Surrealist and Pop Art movements. Copley was born in New York City in 1919 and experienced a touch of fate when he was adopted by millionaire publisher Ira C. Copley and his wife, who owned 16 newspaper companies in San Diego and Chicago. He thus received an elite education at Phillips Andover and Yale University, which was briefly interrupted by the war. Upon returning from WWII, he worked as a reporter, and then began experimenting in art after meeting John Ployardt, an animator at... Read more

If you’re an aspiring photographer more interested in the finer point of portraiture, spend the next five minutes of your life reading this blog post and then exploring the artwork of Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra. The artist concentrates mostly on single portraits joined by a larger theme, such as a series on soldiers, teenagers or the night clubbing animals of the urban jungles of the world. Her photographs are usually composed in a distinct style as well: standing towards the camera with a plain outside background, with mostly natural lighting. Her work, known for its simplicity but at the same time its sophisticated commentary on social issues, has seen it displayed at institutions such as the Tate and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Now from February 18 to May 28, 2012, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will present the artist’s first mid-career retrospective exhibition in the United States, Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective. The artist’s interest is mostly in unknowable and ephemeral knowledge and experience. As the exhibition catalogue notes, she photographs people in transition, during formative periods in their lives when change is perceivable. One of her most renowned series, Beach Portraits, posed youngsters on the... Read more

It has been a tumultuous few weeks for the people of the Maldives. The picturesque island nation, the smallest by land mass and population in Asia, has been the locus of political unrest. Its deeply unpopular President Mohamed Nasheed was forced to stand down at gunpoint and the state lost control of many islands. It’s amazing how the breakdown of order and authority can see humanity revert to almost ape-like modes of basic survival instinct, as seen in natural disaster sites around the globe. In this sense, then, it is no surprise that mobs formed and the Maldives art museum was looted, with many of its prized possessions destroyed. So let’s take a quick look at herd mentality. Ah, that old chestnut, the instinct that arguably allowed human beings to rise in the evolution chain to the lofty heights we now proudly sit atop. We – and our opposable thumbs – managed to group together, make tools and hunt down larger prey and indeed other rival groups of apes and humanoids to emerge as the modern day homo sapiens today. For the original treatise on “herd mentality” or the idea of the mob and group behaviour, look at the studies... Read more

Yesterday we brought you news of the Sotheby’s auction for contemporary art, which recorded a significantly higher estimate than expected while injecting a welcomed confidence boost into global financial and capital markets. Well, of the 1% who collect this type anyway and for the 99% who would go to a museum to gawk at it. Anyway, Christie’s is not one to be outdone; thus they held their own auction of Post-War & Contemporary Art a day later, a sale which saw £80,576,100 or USD$126,504,477 worth of art hammered away. The sum is huge: it was the second highest total ever for this category at the London auction site. The good Englishman Francis Bacon led the charge, with his oil painting the Portrait of Henrietta Moraes selling for an astronomical £21.3 million. Moraes was a good friend of Bacon, so that accounts for what art critics have said is one of the artist’s most erotic paintings (we didn’t think so, but hey). It was the second most valuable artwork of Post-War & Contemporary Art auctioned at Christie’s London; another accolade to add to the Bacon box is that it was the highest price achieved in the category in London since February... Read more

Contemporary art sales have to work hard to gain the headlines that Impressionist and modern art sales easily command. For one, many of the artworks are still unproven, compared to the likes of Monet, Pollock or Dali. Secondly, the artists by definition has to be alive so works don’t always get astronomically high (there are exceptions, of course). The savvy collectors and investors will be able to pick the winners, but for the bulk of us, we really are left wondering exactly  what the value of say, a pickled tiger shark is – if Damien Hirst and his acolytes pickled it, then very expensive. If someone else pickled a fish, well, clearly that is not art, oh plebeian. So how did Sotheby’s most recent Contemporary Art Evening Auction fare last week? Europe and indeed most of the western world may be in some economic ills, but that certainly hasn’t stopped the elites from splurging their money on art. In fact, as we noted before, financial insecurity can lead to an increase in art sales, as investors move from riskier and more liquid investments into something more tangible. Well, tangible it was at Sotheby’s, with a total of £50,688,450, or USD... Read more

When an artist is hot you can’t help but notice an absolute deluge of media coverage, both good and bad, in the art sections of the media. One artist hitting this level is Yayoi Kusama – indeed she has always been in the media and her ongoing longevity is evidence of her transcendental talents and iron will. She’s lived more than ninety years and yet she continues to produce world changing art, with the latest exhibition at the Tate in London hailed as one of her best. In our previous posts we highlighted the topsy-turvy life of Kusama. Born in Matsumoto in rural Japan, she first moved to Tokyo, then New York and various places around the world, creating her impressive and jaw dropping examples of installation art and other pieces, such as oil paintings. She is most well known for her polka dot patterns, usually created on a wide range of mediums including paper and canvas. Kusama has also made a name for herself through her soft sculptures (paintings mixed with sculptures), the most famous of which are her Infinity Net and Accumulation artworks. A large part of the fascination with Kusama lies not just with her artwork, but... Read more

In several of our previous posts we highlighted the influence of literature on oil painting, as well as music and smells on the creative painting process. Artists such as Russian Expressionist and modernist founder Wassily Kandinsky claimed to see sounds in colours – others claim that when smelling different scents, they would see colours flash in their mind. Thanks to modern day science boffins, this phenomenon has been confirmed and today we look at another fascinating aspect of the interplay of creative forces: grunge painting or grunge artwork. Grunge to most readers would be a reference to a genre of music that emerged in the 1980s from the United States of America, particularly the Seattle area in the state of Washington. The music is recognisable for its heavily distorted electric guitars, angst and emotionally filled lyrics and distinct song dynamics. Music critics have noted the grunge aesthetic is more bare-bones and stripped-down compared to other forms of rock music, with many grunge musicians sporting hobo appearances. The two most popular bands from this era epitomised this:  Nirvana, with their smash hit Smells like Teen Spirit and Pearl Jam, who have somewhat moved on from their grunge roots, but nevertheless still... Read more

Any ideas? When we say who, we obviously mean someone notable in the art world. We don’t expect you to guess the thousands of names of babies born in Nigeria, Indonesia, China and India everyday (we’re sure one of them will eventually be a world leading artist). The person who celebrated his birthday recently was Max Beckmann (albeit posthumously), born in 1884. The German artist was a painter, printmaker, draftsman, sculptor and writer, active in the field of Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity. So exactly what was he all about? When considering an artist’s achievements and legacies, it’s always worthwhile to step back and consider just where he came from. Beckmann was from a German middle class family who received an art education similar to his contemporaries. However, there was one defining issue that would change his life and his art: World War I. Beckmann was a medic in the German army and clearly exited the war with a significantly altered worldview. Prior to his years as a medic, Beckmann oil paintings were nearly Alma Tadema-esque: they were academically accurate, featured correct proportions and were traditional. Post WW1 and this changed to a much more distorted style, a... Read more

Vienna holds a special place in art history. On April 3, 1897, a group of avant-garde artists led by the likes of Koloman Moser, Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann, Max Kurzweil and Joseph Maria Olbrich founded the Vienna Secession (also known as the Union of Austrian Artists, or Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs), an art movement that would forever change the history of the field. Like all reactionary art movements, the Vienna Secession was formed in opposition to the mainstream Association of Austrian Artists, which was then housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. The Vienna Secession artists thought the Association of Austrian Artists was too restrictive, hence the formation of the rival group which had a more open exhibitionist policy. Now, hold on to your hats. When we say a “more open exhibitionist policy”, take a deep breath and don’t let your mind run wild: we’re not talking about some erotic foreplay, but rather the fact that the Vienna Secession played an important role in supporting the work of the Impressionists, who at the time were considered too avant-garde and therefore not shown and given much exposure in Europe. Hence the Vienna Secession is credited with making the French Impressionists familiar to the... Read more

Our title quote today comes from a show we hold dear to our hearts, Supernatural. While we don’t normally talk about television shows here, it does provide a nice segue into a discussion of what is an art form and why certain art forms demand much higher prices than others. Why can oil paintings go out of fashion when compared to photographs, even temporarily? Why do certain movements within canvas artwork sell, on average, more per painting than other movements? An analysis of two recent auctions from Sotheby’s and Christie’s in London at the start of February casts light on the fact that art prices at the end of the day are the result of changing human tastes and nothing more. Art observers hailed the huge flow of money at Sotheby’s recent Impressionist and Modern art sale, with total revenues at £78.9 million, or USD$ 125 million. The result was interesting chiefly because of one result: the prominence of Impressionist era oil paintings, which were returning to number one status after years of dominance by more modern art such as Abstract Expressionism and other post impressionist artists like Van Gogh. As the New York Times noted, it was the first... Read more