Tag: art

Berdie

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Double Portrait of Berdie, 1955
Oil, fabricated chalk and charcoal on linen

Larry Rivers

Larry Rivers depicts his mother-in-law who was his primary model at the time, while she was living with Rivers and her daughter in Southampton, New York. Admiration of the artist’s style, brushwork and palette equals my surprise to learn about his relationship with the model. I’m thinking how strange to use your mother-in-law of all people, as a sitter for your nudes.

September 10th, 2016 at the Whitney

Becky

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Mermaid, by Liz Craft. Bronze, steel, paint.

She was part of the ”Mirror Cells” exhibition at the Whitney. When the exhibition ended on August 21st Becky decided to linger awhile. She loved the attention so much she couldn’t bear the thought of parting from one of Manhattan’s most creatively designed terraces.

September 10th, 2016

Good Heavens

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The weight of heaven on his shoulders for eternity: such was the punishment of Titan Atlas by Zeus for leading the Titans (elder gods) against the Olympians (young generation of deities) in what was essentially a power struggle between generations.

Carry Uranus (the sky) on his shoulders to prevent him from reuniting with Gaia (the earth) which would lead back to chaos, Atlas was essentially ”condemned” to be the keeper of the Balance of our Cosmos.

Atlas.
Bronze statue by Lee Lawrie and Rene Paul Chambellan, installed in front of Rockefeller Center in 1937.

24th September, 2016

Odalisque in Grisaille

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Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Odalisque in Grisaille, ca. 1834-34, Oil on Canvas

This painting is an unfinished repetition, reduced in size and much simplified, of the celebrated Grande Odalisque of 1814 (Musée du Louvre, Paris), a work that was central to Ingres’s conception of ideal beauty. Ingres cited it in a list of works he executed in Paris between 1824 and 1834, a period bracketed by lengthy sojourns in Italy. Paintings in shades of gray—en grisaille—were often made to establish variations in tone as a guide to engravers of black and white reproductive prints. As this work has not been linked definitively to known reproductions of the Grande Odalisque, its intended purpose remains uncertain.

Description: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The simplicity, minimalism and cool monochromatic palette of this study, void of all embellishment and focussing on the model`s brilliantly lit-up body, fascinates me even more than the celebrated finished work.

August 27th, 2016

Woman in White

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Pablo Picasso, Woman in White, 1923, oil on canvas

Picasso’s Woman in White is a masterpiece of his Neoclassical Period, which lasted from 1918 to 1925. Here, the artist depicts a seated figure as a dreamlike vision of fragile perfection and refinement. He achieves this effect through the application of several layers of white wash and superimposed contours in soft shades of brown and gray. As in many of his other figures of the period, the idealized treatment of her facial features reflects Picasso’s study of classical art. Her informal pose, along with the loose-fitting, almost diaphanous dress, gives the figure a gentle and relaxed air. The muted color scheme adds a romantic and pensive tone.

On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It is such exquisite examples of his work that remind me what a superb artist Picasso really was.

August 27th, 2016