We’ve added a new feature to our “Gallery Insider” series at the Artsology Membership section, with an inside look at the Jeff Koons exhibition titled Gazing Ball at the David Zwirner Gallery. If you’re an art teacher, a homeschooling parent, or just a parent who wants to engage your kids with contemporary art, please check out our membership offering.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the name of the artist for these sculptures at last year’s Armory Show, but I think it’s somewhat interesting that rather than hang them from the wall, the art dealer simply plugged them in and set them on the floor … I assume that must be the artist’s intention? I might still hang them from the wall if I were in a position to own one … I do like them, they’re pretty funky.
One of the most-common phrases to come out of the mouth of a museum security guard is probably “don’t touch the art.” But what are you supposed to do if the art touches you? Here we’ve got “The Hug,” by Mark Jenkins, at the Fabien Castanier Gallery’s booth at the Scope Art Fair.
I was a bit taken aback when I first saw this piece, as I thought “what is that woman doing?” But it turns out she’s part of the art work … pretty convincing, since you can’t see her face to tell she’s not a live, breathing woman.
I saw this piece by Israeli artist Vered Aharonovitch at the Scope Art Fair a couple weeks ago. I’m trying to find out a little more about this artist, and can report that she was born and still lives in Israel, and is one of the cofounders of “Hanina“, a nonprofit artists cooperative and gallery in Tel Aviv. But I find it especially interesting that she presently teaches art at a high school that is specially geared towards “troubled” teenagers who have problems adapting to “regular” schools. I think I would be troubled too if I had to share my bathtub with a Muscovy Duck! Scroll down for a comparison between the sculpture duck and a real Muscovy Duck … he’s like the “Darth Maul” of the animal kingdom! For more on Aharonovitch, check out her website here.
Oscar Wilde once said that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.” After walking through Rockefeller Center the other day, I think we could update this saying to be “Legos imitate Life and Art.” As you can see, someone has created a Lego version of the famous sculpture at Rockefeller Center. And as far as Legos imitiating art, scroll down to see a Lego version of M.C. Escher’s famous image “Relativity.”
This is a view facing south in the courtyard between the International Folk Art Museum and the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’m not sure which is more dramatic: the larger-than-life sculpture titled Mountain Spirit Dancer by Craig Dan Goseyun, or the incredible clouds in the sky above and behind the sculpture … it’s views like this that make me very fond of the New Mexico landscape.
When I was a teenager, my Dad gave me a t-shirt with a simple cartoon face on it with the slogan “The Nose That Came Out in the Cold.” I wish I had a picture of that t-shirt to show you, because the whole concept was kind of strange – but of course that’s why I liked wearing the shirt, to confuse people with this unusual slogan. The back story of the t-shirt was that my Dad had an eccentric friend who had always had a mustache, and at one point decided to shave it off, at which point he made up these t-shirts and gave them out to his friends. Still confused about “coming out in the cold?” I grew up in Minnesota, so maybe that will explain why a mustache-free nose might get a little cold.
At any rate, seeing this sculpture by Li Hongbo reminded me of “the nose that came out in the cold.” It almost looks like someone took a very precise saw and cut out the nose from an ancient Greek or Roman marble sculpture … except Hongbo’s sculpture is made of paper. Stacks of paper that are bound and can be pulled apart like accordians … am I confusing you as much as that funny t-shirt did to others? Check out our coverage from last January of Li Hongbo’s amazing sculptures which were on display at the Klein Sun Gallery in NYC. Make sure to watch the video to see the accordian-style in action.
I saw this piece by Saint Clair Cemin at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in NYC, and it wasn’t really until I got home and looked closely at this photograph that I realize this “octopus” really only has one arm. Since the sculpture is positioned in a corner of mirrors, the one arm is reflected in the mirrors to produce the illusion of 7 arms in total, at least from this angle. I didn’t move around the piece enough to see if there’s an angle that produces the appearance of 8 arms … you would think that there must be a way to see it that way, because why make an octopus with only 7 arms?
The exhibition is titled “Myth and Math,” and runs through December 23, 2014. The gallery is located at 293 10th Avenue in NYC. According to the gallery’s press release, “the artist continues to push the boundaries of shape and line, manipulating perspective, and uniting disparate materials and themes within individual sculptures.” The artist was born in Brazil, educated in Paris, and currently lives and works in New York (although he also has a studio in Beijing … sounds like a cool mix of places to be!).
We were recently introduced to the sculpture of Rick Lazes, who is based in North Carolina. He has a recent series of work called “The World Is Bending…” in which the works are made out of beautifully crafted hardwoods (oak, walnut, and cherry) and are bent into arched forms using a steam bending technique which Rick has perfected in his studio.
At first, the work might look a bit simple, but one can quickly pick up a number of visual references: long evergreen sedge leaves overlapping each other; a musical notation for G clef; a third view reminds me of Brancusi’s Bird in Space with 2 other swooping birds … the interpretations are endless.
We thought it was pretty interesting to get a look behind the scenes, and to see Lazes and his studio assistants actually build a sculpture from start to finish. Check out the video below, and for more info, check out Rick Lazes’ website here.
Check out our new feature on Leonardo da Vinci and James Capper, in which we look at how these two artists sometimes blur the lines between what is a tool, machine, or sculpture and art. Pictured below left, a 33-barrel gun designed (but never built) by Leonardo da Vinci, and below right, a carving tool by James Capper.
I had an opportunity to visit the Picasso Sculpture exhibition at MoMA yesterday, and I was very glad that I was able to get there to see it, as the show closes this coming Sunday, February 7th. It’s such a popular show, they’re extending the museum hours this coming weekend until 12:00 midnight on both Saturday and Sunday in order to accommodate all of the people who want to see this show … can you believe it?
The show was indeed worthy of the hype, as it is a sweeping survey of Picasso’s lesser-known work in three dimensions … I know it sounds funny to call anything by Picasso “lesser-known,” but truth be told, most people are familiar with his paintings, and so a big exhibition like this allows a great view of his sculptural efforts. It’s also the first such museum show of Picasso’s sculpture in the United States in nearly fifty years!
As I reached the end of the exhibition, the last room is a big, expansive room with a sweeping array of sculptures, and in this big room, I started to notice more of the people around me, and how they moved around and interacted with the sculpture. I had fun taking a few discreet pictures of the crowd moving around the show, and wanted to share a few of them here.
I’ve always imagined that it must take quite a bit of endurance being a security guard in a musuem … all that stationary standing, not much freedom to move around, needing to be relatively still in order to not distract away from the museum-goer’s experience. I’m not sure I could do it, even with the appeal of being around great art all day.
If you’re in the New York area and want to see this show, make sure to get tickets in advance – entry for the Picasso show requires time-based tickets. Get info on tickets for MoMA here.
At Christie’s International’s New York Impressionist and modern art sale last night, this sculpture by Henri Matisse, titled Nu de dos, 4 état (Back IV), sold for $48.8 million dollars, which was a record price for any Matisse work ever sold at auction.
This sculpture was one of four life-sized reliefs which made up the longest-lived single project of Matisse’s career, as he began the first in 1908 and didn’t finish the last (the one at the far right) until 1931. Each of the sculptures were originally made of plaster, and then were cast in bronze editions of 12. Complete sets of the four sculptures are held by nine museums, but this particular sculpture was one of the few single pieces held by a private collector. As one can see by the picture below, this last sculpture was the most-simplified version of the four.
The PBS video series “Off Book” has a new video about LEGO Art, and the way that some people are elevating this “toy” to an art form. In this episode, they talk to three LEGO artists who have made beautiful mosaics, amazing stop-motion videos, thoughtful sculptures, and have turned these tiny building blocks into a true artistic medium. I found it amazing that the first artist once had a 5,000 hour project, and the movie director once took several months to make his film … these guys aren’t playing around!
Check out some of the LEGO art that we made last summer, a Peter Halley painting here and a Kasmir Malevich work here.
Oscar Wilde once said that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.” After walking through Rockefeller Center the other day, I think we could update this saying to be “Legos imitate Life and Art.” As you can see, someone has created a Lego version of the famous sculpture at Rockefeller Center. And as far as Legos imitiating art, scroll down to see a Lego version of M.C. Escher’s famous image “Relativity.”
I happened upon a cool website today called UseCubes, which is a kind of cross between Legos and Minecraft. I jumped right in at the free UseCubes design app, and decided to try to recreate Joel Shapiro’s “Untitled (Dancing Man)” from 1981, below left. You can see that there were a few limitations as far as twisting the cubes exactly like Shapiro does, but it’s a pretty fun app – I’ll be back to try creating something more complex next time.
French artist Pierre Huyghe (pictured below left) was named as the recipient of the 2017 Nasher Prize. I have to admit, I haven’t heard of this award, and perhaps that’s because it’s only in the 2nd year of existence. The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas created the Nasher Prize to be “the most ambitious international award in sculpture, established to honor a living artist who elevates the understanding of sculpture and its possibilities.”
I also have to admit, I’m not very familiar with Pierre Huyghe either, so let’s take a look at some of his work. Above right is “Zoodram 4” from 2011, which includes a live marine ecosystem, aquarium, and this resin mask (based on Constantin Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse from 1910), which has been fitted for this live crab.
As I’m looking more at the work of Pierre Huyghe, I realize I did see an exhibition of his last year, “The Roof Garden Commission: Pierre Huyghe,” on the rooftop of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, pictured below (on a side note – that was the exhibition I saw when I was on the rooftop of the Met doing my “undercover” Walker Evans-inspired photography project).
It’s a little tough to give a brief overview of Huyghe’s work, because he’s done so many different things … but you can get an introduction here, and check back at the Artsology blog later, as my curiosity will probably prompt me to look at his work again in greater depth.
Here’s a short video of an installation art work by Subodh Gupta titled “This is not a fountain,” which we saw on view at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery a while back. We’ve featured this art work before – in our feature about “10 Challenging Art Works for Art Collectors” as well as our feature on “Readymades, Functional Art and Art for Art’s Sake” – but in both of those cases, we had a still photo, and we thought a video where you can actually get a sense of what is happening with this art would be interesting to see …
