#artonthisday

[pelhamcommunications]

Théodore Géricault

An influential French painter and lithographer, Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was born on this day, 26 September 1791. He was one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement known for “The Raft of the Medusa(above)” and other anatomy paintings.

Géricault left the art classroom under Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, a rigorous classicist who disapproved of his student's impulsive temperament yet recognized his talent. Instead, he chose to study at the Louvre, where he copied paintings by Rubens, Titian, Velázquez and Rembrandt. During this period at the Louvre he discovered a vitality he found lacking in the prevailing school of Neoclassicism. Much of his time was spent in Versailles where he gained his knowledge of the anatomy and action of horses.

 Perhaps his most significant and ambitious work, is “The Raft of the Medusa”, which depicted the aftermath of a contemporary French shipwreck, Meduse, in which the captain had left the crew and passengers to die. The painting's notoriety stemmed from its indictment of a corrupt establishment, but it also dramatized a more eternal theme, that of man's struggle with nature. The classical depiction of the figures and structure of the composition stand in contrast to the turbulence of the subject, so that the painting constitutes an important bridge between neo-classicism and romanticism.

[pelhamcommunications]

Turner Prize nominee Michael Dean is London's most exciting art star

In his work, he tries to give material form to words. He starts with a word, then interprets it physically using industrial materials such as concrete and corrugated iron to create his odd, yet oddly endearing, abstract sculptures. He is nominated for last spring’s South London Gallery show Sic Glyphs, in which he explored the three-dimensional possibilities of language by assembling sculptures spelling out words. 

 Dean is likeably open about the fact that the £5,000 runners-up cheque, let alone the £25,000 prize money, was an incentive in his agreeing to be a Turner nominee. ‘I mean that will go a long way,’ says the artist who buys his clothes second-hand and does not eat out. 

 Winning a £50,000 Paul Hamlyn award in 2014 was transformative. That and his work beginning to be collected allowed the family, including Erol, 10, and Oskar, 5, to buy their first home in Ilford — ‘We love it; it’s like Bethnal Green 10 years ago’ — and Dean to rent a nearby studio which actually has the capacity to store his works. Before, he would often have to hide them in plain sight behind park bushes, in car parks or sidings. ‘No one gives a s*** about a piece of broken concrete on the street as long as no one trips over it,’ he says cheerfully.

Turner Prize 2016 is open at Tate Britain 27 September to 2 January 2017.

 Via The Evening Standard

 America saved me but London is my backbone

At a starry Tate Modern dinner on Tuesday night, architect David Adjaye collected the Panerai London Design Medal for his long-standing contribution to the industry — one of the British Land Celebration of Design awards that form part of the London Festival of Design.

 With an OBE and Stirling Prize nomination already in his pocket, Adjaye is flying high, even before taking into account the latest medal. He reckons a third of his life is spent on planes, jetting between projects in the US, Europe and Africa.

 Born to Ghanaian diplomat parents and brought up in north London, Adjaye is an inveterate globetrotter. He’s just back from the US, where his $540 million National Museum of African American History and Culture opens to the public on Saturday. It is the newest addition to the suite of monumental Smithsonian museums along the Mall in Washington DC. 

 Although Adjaye claims “London is my home, my creative hub” London’s design internationalism with which he grew up is under threat from Brexit, and Adjaye has been vocal about it: “It’s sad. London has become a world leader because of this. I’m concerned that the dynamism, the spice, of the design community will be lost. I don’t want us to squander the jewels we’ve inherited from the past 30 years.”

 Via The Evening Standard

  William Kentridge: An overnight sensation — at last

From time to time a name crops up on the art scene with what soon starts to feel like an almost cultish regularity. That name, at the moment, is William Kentridge. I’ve lost count of the times over the past few months that the subject of his work has been brought up and discussed.

 At 61, soberly dressed and with a silvery thatch, he hardly looks the part of the latest art-world hipster. However, go to the Whitechapel Gallery in east London — which is stagingThick Time, Kentridge’s first major UK show for 15 years — and you will find out why this South African artist is stirring up such an appreciative fuss.

 Kentridge has slowly and patiently built up his reputation. Developing the signature charcoal drawings that lie at the foundation of his practice into animations and films, gradually deepening his long-cogitated references as he went, he has put together a body of work that exerts more than a just visual fascination. It is also intellectually absorbing.

What in less artful hands could dissolve away into merely pleasing visuals, or else solidify into indigestible lumps of science and politics, is translated by Kentridge into something profound and persuasive. The art world is talking about Kentridge for a very good reason. If you want to join in the conversation, get along to this show quick. 

 Via The Times

  BBC to be ‘unashamedly Hull-centric’ during city’s year in cultural spotlight

There will be Bacon’s Screaming Popes, Spiders from Mars, the world premiere of a new Richard Bean play and a particularly important and surprise commitment from the director general of the BBC: from 1 January 2017 Hull will always be on the weather map.

 Hull was named UK City of Culture after the success of Derry’s inaugural year in 2013. Both follow the transformative examples of Glasgow and Liverpool, which were European Capitals of Culture in 1990 and 2008 respectively. What that means is a budget of £32m and a blizzard of arts and culture in the city over 365 days.

 Among the highlights will be a four-day season of Nordic music curated by the singer-songwriter John Grant; the transformation by Opera North of the Humber Bridge into a piece of music; a season of films by Anthony Minghella; and a retrospective celebrating the work of ambient music pioneer Basil Kirchin.

 There will also be a homecoming show for David Bowie’s backing band the Spiders from Mars which featured local boys Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Mick “Woody” Woodmansey. The plan on 25 March is for a live rendition of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars in its entirety, by the band Holy Holy – featuring Woodmansey, Tony Visconti and Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory.

Via The Guardian 

[pelhamcommunications]

Willem Pietersz Buytewech

Willem Pieterszoon Buytewech was born in Rotterdam around 1591. His father Pieter was a cobbler and candlemaker. He started his artistic studies in the Dutch town of Haarlem where at the age of twenty one, he eventually became a member of the local artist’s guildHaarlem Guild of St Lukes , along with two other young local artists Hercules Segers and Essias van de Velde,. Here at this prestigious workshop he worked alongside many great Dutch painters including the master himself, Frans Hals, who proved a great influence on Buytewech’s works.  

 Willem Buytewech, who was known as the inventor of Dutch genre paintings, was nicknamed by his contemporaries “Geestige Willem” meaning “Spirited or Jolly” Willem for his penchant of irony and that he was one of the first Dutch painters to use a group of people carousing as a subject for a painting. An interesting note concerning his paintings is the framed map on the wall behind the revellers. Buytewech was the first artist to use wall maps as a major motif in interior scenes. He was a leading pioneer of genre interiors. Of the ten paintings by Buytewech, four include wall maps. 

 Unfortunately there are only a small number of Buytewech’s paintings in existence but he will be remembered as one of the most interesting artists during the first years of the great period of Dutch painting. His pictures of dandies, fashionable ladies, drinkers and lusty wenches are amongst the most spirited of the Dutch genre scene and instituted the category known as “Merry Company”.

 Willem Buytewech died prematurely in Rotterdam in September 1624 at the young age of thirty three and never saw his son, Willem the Younger who was born the following year and who was to follow his father’s footsteps and become a painter.

[pelhamcommunications]

Dale Chihuly

The American glass sculptor and entrepreneur, Dale Chihuly, was born on this day in 1941. His works are considered unique to the field of blown glass and are included in more than 200 museum collections worldwide. The technical difficulties of working with glass forms are considerable, yet Chihuly uses it as the primary medium for installations and environmental artwork. He has been the recipient of many awards, including twelve honorary doctorates and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

[pelhamcommunications]

Sol LeWitt

"The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product."

Artist Sol LeWitt was born on this day in 1928. LeWitt was pivotal in the creation of the new radical aesthetic of the 1960's that was a revolutionary contradiction to the 'Abstract Expressionism' current in the 1950's and 60's New York school. He had no interest in inherent narrative or descriptive imagery. 

LeWitt, like no other artist of his generation, had always maintained the importance of the concept or idea and, apart from his original works on paper, the work is executed by others to clear and strict instructions. As one of the first coherent proponents of conceptual art with his writings, LeWitt's work continues to be regarded and referred to by a younger generation of artists as one of the seminal investigations into 'idea' and 'concept' art.

[pelhamcommunications]

Michael Baxandall

Famed British art historian Michael Baxandall died on this day in 2008. He has been described as a scholar who expanded the frontiers of his discipline in addressing the broad sweep of cultural history. Baxandall held posts at various prestigious institutions such as the Warburg Institute and the Victoria and Albert Museum, eventually becoming somewhat of an academic celebrity.

Baxandall is known for coining the influential term “the period eye”, which describes how artists and their works functioned in their original social and religious contexts. The term was first introduced in his innovative book Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, in which he demonstrated that attention should be cast beyond just the learned elite to include mass classes such as merchants and artisans, as well as material history and day-to-day practices. While many of Baxandall’s concepts are indispensable to art historical practice today, his expansive thinking was shocking in its time.

[pelhamcommunications]

Edvard Munch’s The Scream and Madonna were stolen

On August 22nd 2004 The Scream and Madonna were stolen in a heist from Oslo’s Much Museum. Armed gunmen broke into the Museum in broad daylight and took both paintings off the wall, leaving with them in a getaway car. Together the paintings were worth around £50m. 

People started to fear about the damage caused to the paintings after the police found shattered wooden frames and glass from the works less than a mile away from the museum. Investigators believed that this heist may have been used as a distraction for the police from a previous robbery case at a bank in which an officer was killed. 

Both paintings were found two years later, however the details surrounding the discovery of them and their whereabouts during the two years were not revealed. Surprisingly they were found with less damage than expected.