‘Attention Shoppers,’ Artist in Aisle Four

Gail McCarthy, Gloucester Daily Times

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Many artists look for inspiration from natural beauty, objects or an abstract source.

But Gloucester’s Lara Lepionka sought inspiration from the worker whose job often goes unnoticed in a project titled “Attention Shoppers.”

She spent a week observing and photographing the workers at Shaw’s Eastern Avenue store as they worked at everything from cutting meat to operating a cash register.

When she approached the manager, David Kenney, he paused a moment to think about her request to be an artist-in-residence because it was so unusual. But he supported her idea and received corporate approval for the weeklong residency.

Kenney presented Lepionka, who calls herself a community artist, with her own Shaw’s name tag with the title “artist.” She set out to be as unobtrusive as possible while capturing images of the employees last May.

Those images would ultimately be carved into small Styrofoam trays, in a filigree-type work. But the final work could not be easily displayed because of its fragile nature.

So the artist transferred the images onto banners, which now hang at the supermarket checkouts. They will remain through the end of the month.

“My work centers around acknowledging everyday work that we don’t pay attention to or consider,” Lepionka said. “I went behind the scenes and photographed the people who package meat, chop up fruit in the back room, slice bread, the cashiers and people who work in the office. It was informal and fast because people are working and you can’t get into an enormous discussion about what you are doing.”

The work she sought to highlight is usually repetitive or labor intensive.

“My work is about communication and being open and sharing,” said Lepionka, who has a master’s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

When approached by Lepionka, Kenney said he was intrigued by the idea and impressed with the artist’s sincerity.

“She wanted to photograph ordinary people at work and carve the images into Styrofoam. She showed me other pieces of her work,” he said. “Not being an artist, I was fascinated by the whole process. What we liked about this project was that it was just art for art’s sake. There was no political message, just art. With her artist’s eye, she looked around, and I’m sure she found enough suitable subjects doing their common everyday jobs. She was discreet and didn’t interrupt anything.”

He called her completed work “amazing.”

“Art is one of those things that is in an entirely different category than what I do. But it was interesting to see an artist working,” Kenney said. “Artists have a different way of looking at the world, and it was great to see the finished project of people I know doing their jobs, looking like themselves. It’s seeing the art in everyday life.”

Lepionka’s work sparked discussion among some of the staff.

Jim Johnson, the meat cutter on one of the banners, said he enjoyed seeing the artist at work.

“She wanted to see people in motion,” said Johnson, who chose to slice rib-eye by hand so the artist could see the full picture of his work. Johnson, who ran Ernie’s Market on Broadway in Rockport for 15 years, has worked at Shaw’s for the past 20 years, since he closed his store.

“In the break room, we all talked about it,” he said. “The project was interesting, and the thing we talked about was recognizing the motions that we make. It sparked conversation about what we do every day, which we don’t usually talk about.”

Lepionka, who was accepted into a two-week art residency in the Czech Republic, did the carving overseas in the town of Tabor. She carved the images of five workers on five Styrofoam plates that measure about 7 by 9 inches and on which meat, fruit and other foods are packaged.

“I used the photograph as a template to carve the images of the workers into the plate,” she said. “I went half deep into the Styrofoam. I first carved the image and then created a delicate filigree around the image.”

Both the artist and workers at the store said the customers have enjoyed seeing the unusual display of art in what is described as a unique community art project.

Ride to Reno: A Motorcycle Ride to Benefit Visual Arts

Rachel Gray, NAMTA

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

“Ride to Reno” is a motorcycle ride to benefit the NAMTA Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization for the arts.

Teams of riders will leave from different points in the United States to reach Reno, NV by May 1, 2008 for NAMTA’s annual convention and trade show. NAMTA is the National Art Materials Trade Association, a membership organization whose members manufacture and sell art supplies.

The NAMTA Foundation supports the arts by providing annual scholarships for students pursuing art-related courses of study; disaster relief grants to aid those individuals, art-related businesses and organizations who are devastated by natural or manmade disasters; grants to individuals and organizations to provide art projects within local communities; and coordination of art projects for children and senior citizens. Click here for the Ride to Reno website.

Olympic Graffiti Becomes Art that Chinese Want to Keep in Cities

Cruz Fang, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Graffiti, an annoying problem in some western cities, is now sprawling in Chinese cities with some being treated as a branch of art and others with Olympic themes quietly tolerated by the government.

A giant graffiti on the theme of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was done overnight in June in the northeast city of Changchun. While some of the citizens called to preserve it, city officials declared it unlawful.

The 24-year-old graffiti artist who spent two nights creating the work with friends was surprised at how much support he received from residents who want to keep it as a piece of art.

“To be frank, I was feeling like a thief when I was doing it,” said Li Xiang, who claimed his intention was to create some graffiti in the city and do something for the Beijing Games.

Citizens thought the painting shows nice painting skills, but they didn’t appreciate Li and his friends getting so much attention from their work..

The art of the graffiti went further one month later in the capital city of Jilin Province, as a controversial graffiti competition, organized by a local newspaper, barely got the government’s approval.

Meanwhile, in the southwest municipality of Chongqing, the local government even designated a street for graffiti painters to show off their artistic skills. Local media reported the government is applying to the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest street covered in graffiti.

Italian Winery Turns Labels into Art Exhibits

Reuters

Monday, July 09, 2007

Many people say making wine is an art and an Italian winery once owned by Michelangelo has extended that notion right down to its labels.

John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono is the 25th artist commissioned by German art collector and owner of the Nittardi winery, Peter Femfert, to draw a label for a limited edition of his wine.

Every year since 1981, Femfert has “dressed” about 6,000 bottles of his wine – a Chianti with a fresh and fruity bouquet made from 97 percent Sangiovese grape and three percent local Canaiolo grape – with a special work of art.

“It all started as a game and it has now become a trademark of our winery,” said Giorgio Conte, an agronomist and director of the Nittardi vineyard.

Well known contemporary artists including Spain’s Miguel Berrocal, Germany’s Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Italian Luigi Veronesi and Belgian Corneille have worked on the project.

This year Ono has produced a colored ink drawing entitled “Imagine you,” a still life of bottles and glasses in a dotted style reminiscent of the late 19th century French painting style known as pointillism.

Ono and all the other artists involved were given total creative freedom. She tasted Nittardi Chianti and other farm products, said Conte, drawing her inspiration from the wine.

“Femfert met her through his contacts in the art world and proposed that she create something for him,” said Conte. “More than 20 years ago it wasn’t easy to convince artists to work on a wine label, now we have many who come forward themselves.”

Femfert asks them to make two original drawings that he keeps in his gallery in Frankfurt, and from those he prints a limited number of labels and paper for wrapping the bottles.

“The wine with special labels is the same one that we put in normal bottles,” said Conte. “It’s just a matter of passion for the art.”

Scattered around the Nittardi winery there are different sculptures and art installations collected by the owner, while the property itself has an outstanding artistic pedigree, having once belonged to Michelangelo, the Renaissance sculptor and painter of the Sistine Chapel.

“It doesn’t necessarily help us to sell more wine, but it’s good for the company’s image and it’s a way to keep up the artistic traditions of the farm,” said Conte. 

Making Masterpieces Street Art

Arifa Akbar

Thursday, June 14, 2007

LONDON - Staff and customers of a Soho sex shop had something new to look at yesterday: a life-sized reproduction of a Caravaggio painting that had been hung up outside the establishment overnight.

The high-quality digital copy of Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist, hangs a whisker’s breadth away from the Harmony sex shop, in a gilt frame.

It is just one of 45 high-quality reproductions of masterpieces by the likes of Rubens, Titian and Monet, that have been displayed in the streets of central London by the National Gallery in an effort to bring art to a new urban audience.

For the next three months, pedestrians will come across this “urban intervention” as part of an initiative called “The Grand Tour”, which is aimed at “getting the public to look and think about art”, according to the gallery.

The gallery has created a map marking the locations of all the works, with themed tours that cater for lovers, or take in the more “heavy-hitting” works by Titian, Seurat, and Van Eyck.

Andy Holmes, a courier, did just that, halting his bike abruptly in front of a reproduction of Rubens’ painting, Samson and Delilah, which is hung opposite a pub off Carnaby Street.

Other works on show included Da Vinci’s The Virgin of the Rocks, displayed in a side road off Regents St, Bermejo’s St Michael Triumphs over the Devil, outside the London Fire Station on Shaftesbury Ave, and Stubbs’ equestrian portrait, Whistlejacket, hung outside the Palace Theatre, which is currently showing Spamalot.

Two members of staff at Harmony’s thought the Caravaggio painting - depicting a New Testament story of Salome who requests the head of John the Baptist on a plate - fitted its new surroundings rather well.

“It’s not a bad location for it. There were prostitutes in the Bible after all, and you’ll find plenty here,” said one worker.

The initiative is an inversion of a prank by the graffiti artist, Banksy, who hung his own work at the National Gallery a few years ago.

Charles Saumarez Smith, director of the National Gallery, said the project came about through the gallery’s desire to “democratise” art.

“These paintings represent the most popular works in the National Gallery and in bringing them out on the streets, we have sought to democratise the experience of art. It’s a way of getting people to look and think about the works of artists outside the gallery itself,” he said.

The works are said to be graffiti-proof - and difficult to steal.

Greek Art World in Uproar Over Raid on “Indecent” Art Exhibit

CBC Arts

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Greek artists, intellectuals and media are protesting a police raid and closure of an art exhibit authorities deemed “indecent” in Athens last weekend.

Police said they were tipped off that offensive material was being displayed at the Art Athina show in central Athens, which led to the raid on Saturday.

Featuring work by more than 70 artists and organized under the auspices of the Greek Cultural Ministry, the 13th edition of the Art Athina exhibit included an installation by artist Eva Stefani in which viewers could peer through a peephole and see footage of Greek pornography from the 1960s and 1970s, set to a soundtrack that includes the Greek national anthem.

Clearly marked signs around Stefani’s installation gave notice that it was not suitable for those under the age of 18.

On Saturday, police confiscated the video, arrested the exhibit’s curator, Michalis Argyros, and charged him with offending public morals. Stefani was also charged with offending public morals, but was in Germany at the time. If convicted, they could face a maximum sentence of 10 months in jail.

“I find it unacceptable that a work of art is violently removed from an exhibition,” Stefani, a filmmaker and lecturer at the University of Athens, told the Eleftherotypia newspaper.
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Dozens of artists staged a counter-exhibit on Monday, in protest of the weekend action, while Greek newspaper editorials also deplored the raid.

Greek Culture Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis said in a statement Monday that while the artwork in question is not to his liking, he disagreed with censoring art.

“The specific artwork does not agree with my esthetics or principles,” Voulgarakis said. “Artists are free to create and citizens have a right to reject or not whatever they believe offends our national symbols.”

Camera Phone Photography Emerges as Art

May Wong, Associated Press

Saturday, May 19, 2007

SAN JOSE – Patrice Elmi hasn’t touched her bulky 35 mm camera since last fall. The emerging visual artist from Los Angeles has discovered that all she needs is the diminutive gizmo she clips to her jeans and flips open to chat with friends.

Take a look at her photography – colorful abstracts of urban settings – and it’s not immediately obvious that her equipment of choice is a cell phone camera.

Even LG Electronics Inc., maker of the handset Elmi uses, initially didn’t believe her photos originated from its LG8100 phone when she asked the company to sponsor a recent gallery exhibit of her camera-phone art.

“When people see my images, they don’t believe that I took them with a cell phone,” she said. “The depth and clarity of the images are so phenomenal.”

The quality was good enough to persuade John Matkowsky, owner of Drkrm, a small gallery showing Elmi’s work through May 26, to break from his norm of featuring only traditional silver prints to do his first-ever show of digital prints.

“I think it’s the future,” Matkowsky said. “I think in two years, or 10 – I don’t know – it’ll be normal, and everyone will be doing cell-phone photography shows.”

Elmi, who teaches local art classes and has dabbled in photography since 1979, said her camera phone “addiction” started last fall when she encountered a corner of a building that she wanted to photograph.

But she had left her camera bag at home. Then it dawned on her: she was carrying a camera – in her phone.

She took her inaugural cell phone photo and never turned back.

“I love it so much because it’s so convenient,” she said. “Now I’m just carrying one little thing, taking pictures.”

Elmi uses the same core principles, such as composition and lighting, that she previously used with her Nikon film camera but applies them within the limitations of her new art medium.

Because her camera phone lacked a flash and zoom capability (some newer models now have limited zoom), Elmi said her shots were usually close-ups and made the most of natural lighting. Vibrant colors were often in play.

And since her camera phone’s resolution was 1.3 megapixels (standalone digital cameras typically feature 3-megapixel to 8-megapixel resolutions), photo prints had to stay relatively small to avoid grainy images. Elmi’s photography now comes in 6-by-6-inch prints, mounted onto aluminum sheets. 

‘Note’ Worthy Art

Michael Patrao

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Sujatha M P, a resident of Udayanagar, practices an unusual form of art. She uses used stamps and shredded currency notes as her art material to create collages of exquisite art.

Of course she does not actually shred currency notes. She gets them from the Reserve Bank of India.

“The shredded currency is available in the form of compressed cubes or powder (tiny bits of paper), which can be used for art, craft or any other purpose”, she says. Notes of different denominations give different hues.

This is comparatively a new form of art because shredded currency notes were not available in India earlier.

The soiled notes were burnt. The process of burning the currency notes was causing pollution as they are coated with chemicals, pigments and colours, which released harmful pollutants. So in a way this is an environment friendly art.

Weeding out soiled currency notes and replacing them with fresh ones are part of the Clean Note Policy being followed by the RBI over the past three years.

Soiled notes are shredded online. Kumarapapa National Handmade Paper Institute in Sanganer, a Jaipur suburb has been converting shredded currency waste from RBI into durable file covers.

Using stamps and shredded currency bits, Sujatha has created Lord Venkateshwara, Ganesha, Mahatma Gandhi, Kuvempu, Subhash Chandra Bose, the symbol OM, Map of India, Sarvagna (medieval saint of Karnataka).

Sujatha presented a portrait of APJ Abdul Kalam created out of stamps to him during one of his visits to Bangalore and he was very impressed with the artwork. She has exhibited her work at a few places including the World Environment Day celebrations organised by Karnataka State Pollution Control Board.

Sujatha’s inspiration comes from her father M R Prabhakar, a philatelist and numismatist, who has conducted a number of philatelic exhibition in rural schools under the name, “Rurapex.”

She has a science degree and teaches handwriting, another area in which she is proficient, to students of IAF School, Marthahalli.

Artist Uses Mini-Windmills to Create Illuminated Art on Vail Mountainside

Robert Weller, Associated press

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

VAIL, Colo. – Even Don Quixote didn’t try tilting at windmills in the dark.

Denver artist Patrick Marold has installed 2,700 mini-windmills along a Vail mountainside, each powering lights inside tubes the windmills are perched on – creating a tableau dependent on the stirrings of the breeze.

“If there is a statement in my art it is that I try to completely release it. Nature takes control,” Marold said, his hands covered with cuts from gouging holes in the mountainside for the past week. The project took three months.

“My hands are off now. I just let it happen.”

The wind generally dies down in the evening here, so in a sense Marold’s mission with “The Windmill Project” could be as daunting as the quest of Miguel Cervantes’ mythical hero.

Weather forecasts called for a front this week that Marold hopes will illuminate the tubes. It takes at least a 15-mph breeze to drive generators inside the white, 8-foot-tall polycarbonate tubes and really make them glow.

“A couple of nights ago we had strong winds and they lit up like a birthday cake. It made me tingle,” said Leslie Fordham, in charge of public art for Vail. The project, which cost $94,000, doesn’t officially open until Friday.

It’s another bid to make Vail, the nation’s busiest ski area, a cultural destination. Vail already hosts international dancers and singers, including the Bolshoi, and major orchestras.

“Now we want to get into the visual arts,” said Fordham.

The town and the ski resort are committed to using as much green power – such as wind – as possible. So “The Windmill Project” makes a statement for the town as well as the artist.

The windmills, whose blades are customized anemometers 4 inches in diameter, can be seen above a golf course from nearby Interstate 70. At first glance, in the daylight, they could be mistaken for another grove of winter-barren aspens in the snowy background.

The roar of nearby Gore Creek covers any sound the windmills might make, as well as highway noise.

The 32-year-old artist, a Fulbright scholar who studied industrial design in Rhode Island, has worked with windmills before. In Iceland he lived on a farm where it was so dark most of the time that he gravitated toward light as an art form. The wind there averaged 30 mph with gusts of 80 mph every day; he built 200 windmills – prototypes for the Vail project.

In Vail, there were other obstacles. The rock was so hard Marold and his crew broke two or three drill bits daily. Some tubes fell apart while being carried to the site on a snowcat.

The Vail windmills come down after April 22, and Marold hopes to take them to Santa Fe, N.M. He hopes to move the exhibit from one spot to another every week or month.

“We’ve even had interest from Chicago – the Windy City,” he said. 

Man Draws Elaborate Works Of Art On Dirty Car Windows

Associated Press

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

He’s made a likeness of the Mona Lisa.

There’s a portrait of Albert Einstein.

He’s even recreated that infamous picture of dogs playing poker.

You’ve seen knock-offs of those before. So what’s the big deal about Scott Wade’s art? It’s his canvas.

The San Marcos, Texas graphics interface designer paints his masterpieces in a place where they’re guaranteed not to last for posterity - the dirty windows on his Mini Cooper.

Like many of us, Wade has seen those cars badly in need of some water and has been tempted to scrawl the hackneyed ‘wash me’ on a dust obscured back window.

But one day four years ago, inspiration struck, and the artist-in-waiting decided to attempt something far more ambitious than just a message about dirt. At first, he used his finger to sketch cartoon-like figures on his own car.

Then he discovered a new trick - you could use a frayed Popsicle stick to get all kinds of gray hues in that ash. So he began experimenting and before he knew it his artistic bent - with an accent on the bent - began coming out.

Wade can often be seen zooming his car over dusty hill and trail, trying to accumulate a layer of dirt on the back windshield so he can draw his newest creation.

In addition to his classics, the 48-year-old has also done replicas of Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, Boticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”, a picture of his late dog, various funny faces, a tribute to a magazine writer who wrote an article about him, and even a likeness of “The Last Supper.”

He’s also received requests to use the ashes of cremated people to draw their likenesses as they roll to their final resting place, a decidedly creepy idea.

“I’ve always drawn pictures on dirty windows,” the artist explains. “It wasn’t a conscious decision to develop a new art form. It was just looking for art in everything.”

Each one takes only about half an hour to create and the results can be astonishing.

He’s made about 50 of them so far, and never washes them off, allowing time, nature and the occasional rain storm to do that for him. He takes pictures of every one of them and claims he’s never upset when they’re gone, calling that the transitory nature of his muse.

Besides, like an Etch-a-Sketch, it simply clears the way for his next creation.

“Since it’s temporary it doesn’t have to be perfect,” Wade points out. “You don’t have to belabour it.”

Naturally, there are academics who hail his work as a bold new step in the world of art.

“They’re really transient art which, again, artists have done,” explains Texas State University art and design professor Brian Row, who taught Wade in college. “You experience it once and it’s gone. ... It certainly falls within the range of the way artists work.”

Among Wade’s worst enemies in his creative endeavours: too much sun (which can make the dust difficult to manipulate), a downpour (which happens frequently in Texas), and a rear windshield wiper (which can act as a giant eraser.)

To see a gallery of Wade’s artwork, click here.

Spielberg Unknowingly Bought Stolen Art

Associated Press

Sunday, March 04, 2007

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Norman Rockwell paintings often resonate because of their depictions of everyday life, but the life of one of his paintings has been anything but mundane.

Russian Schoolroom, a Rockwell painting stolen from a gallery in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton, Mo., more than three decades ago, was found in Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s art collection, the FBI announced Friday.

Spielberg purchased the painting in 1989 from a legitimate dealer and didn’t know it was stolen until his staff spotted its image last week on an FBI website listing stolen works of art, the bureau said in a statement.

After Spielberg’s staff brought it to the attention of authorities, an FBI agent and an art expert from the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino inspected the painting at one of Spielberg’s offices and confirmed its authenticity Friday morning. Early FBI estimates put the painting’s value at $700,000, officials said.

Spielberg is cooperating with the FBI and will retain possession of the Russian Schoolroom until its “disposition can be determined,” the bureau said.

“The second anybody said, ‘I think we have that painting,’ (our) office got a hold of the FBI,” said Spielberg’s spokesman, Marvin Levy.

The oil-on-canvas painting shows children in a classroom with a bust of communist leader Vladimir Lenin. It was nabbed in a gallery heist and then resurfaced briefly in legitimate art forums before disappearing again. At the time of the theft, the work was 16 inches by 37 inches.

Mary Ellen Shortland, who worked at the long-closed Clayton Art Gallery, recalled Friday that someone from Missouri paid $25,000 for the painting after seeing it during a Rockwell exhibition featuring mostly lithographs.

The client agreed to keep it on display, she said, but a few nights later someone smashed the gallery’s glass door and escaped with the painting.

“That was all they took. That’s what they wanted, that painting,” Shortland recalled.

The gallery refunded the client’s money, and there was no sign of the work for years. Then in 1988, it was auctioned in New Orleans.

In 2004, the FBI’s newly formed Art Crime Team initiated an investigation to recover the work after determining it had been advertised for sale at a Rockwell exhibit in New York in 1989.

It wasn’t immediately known whether Spielberg purchased the painting at that New York exhibit.

Spielberg is a longtime Rockwell collector. He helped found the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., where he is also on the board of trustees.

“He’s certainly one of the collectors of Rockwell,” said Levy, who wasn’t sure how many of the artist’s paintings Spielberg owns. “We have a few in our office on the Universal lot.”

Rockwell’s works often capture moments from everyday life, such as a boy watching his father shave, family members saying grace over a Thanksgiving turkey or a young girl having a dress fitting.

The artist died at age 84 in 1978. While Russian Schoolroom appeared in Look magazine, the artist is best known for the covers he did for The Saturday Evening Post. More than 300 Rockwell creations appeared on the cover of the publication.

Picasso Paintings Stolen from his Granddaughter’s House

AP, USA Today

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

PARIS (AP) — At least two Picasso paintings, worth a total of nearly $66 million, were stolen from the artist’s granddaughter’s house in Paris, police said Wednesday.
The paintings, Maya and the Doll and Portrait of Jacqueline, disappeared overnight Monday to Tuesday from the chic 7th arrondissement, or district, a Paris police official said.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said they were worth nearly $66 million, and that there were signs of breaking and entering in the house.

Though police only mentioned the two paintings, the director of the Picasso Museum, Anne Baldassari, said several paintings and drawings were stolen from the home of Diana Widmaier-Picasso.

“It was a very large theft,” she said, without giving details.

“Maya and the Doll” is a colorful portrait of a young blonde girl in pigtails, eyes askew in a Cubist perspective. Another version of the painting hangs in the Picasso Museum. It portrays Maya Widmaier, the daughter of Picasso and Marie-Therese Walter, his companion from 1924-1944.

Maya married Pierre Widmaier had three children, Olivier, Richard and Diana Widmaier-Picasso, an art historian and author of a book called Art Can Only be Erotic.

No other details of the theft were immediately available.

The Art Loss Register, which maintains the world’s largest database on stolen, missing and looted art, currently lists 444 missing Picasso pieces, including paintings, lithographs, drawings and ceramics.

Among recent missing Picassos reported to the register was the theft of an abstract watercolor stolen in Mexico, said staff member Antonia Kimbell.

The number of missing Picassos is so high simply because Picasso was so prolific, Kimbell said. She said the Paris theft was “definitely quite significant.”

“Anything of particularly good quality, with the provenance of his granddaughter, would reach considerable value on the open market,” Kimbell said.

But major pieces, when stolen, usually sell for a pittance, if at all, on the black market because potential buyers are afraid to touch them.

“It’s unlikely a legitimate dealer would purchase or acquire any of these pieces,” Kimbell said.

Artist Kahlo’s Clothes to Go on Display

Istra Pacheco

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

The trunk, discovered in the back of an old wardrobe that had been forgotten in an unused bathroom, was like stepping into the past.

Curators opened the lid to find hundreds of Frida Kahlo’s colorful skirts and blouses, many still infused with the late artist’s perfume and cigarette smoke.

It has taken two years to log and restore the nearly 300 articles of clothing. Next summer, the embroidered and sometimes paint-smeared pieces will be put on display at Kahlo’s family home-turned-museum to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the painter’s birth. The exhibit will offer the public a new glimpse into Kahlo’s flamboyant and tortured life.

The wife of muralist Diego Rivera, Kahlo is known as much for her outspoken and sometimes outrageous style as for her intensely personal paintings. She survived a horrible bus crash and polio as a child, was openly bisexual and had an affair with Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

Her tumultuous life has inspired several plays and films, including the 2002 movie “Frida,” starring Salma Hayek.

Kahlo was known in part for her fashion leadership, and was featured on the cover of Vogue’s French edition.

While most women were turning toward the simple, elegant dresses, Kahlo was wearing long, full skirts that borrowed heavily from Mexico’s traditional Indian dress. She often had her hair in braids, and refused to remove a mustache or trim her unibrow, both of which she exaggerated in her signature self-portraits.

The trunk of clothes was found in 2004 during a renovation of her family’s home, where she died in 1954 after a life of nearly constant pain and dozens of surgeries for broken bones she suffered in the bus accident. Inside were dresses, tablecloths and a letter from Rivera.

The clothes were a window on Kahlo’s life. The curators of her museum were struck not only by the actual garments, but by the fact that they still smelled of Kahlo.

“There is still a trace of that very particular odor,” said Magdalena Rosen Zweig, who helped restore the clothing. “It’s not mildew or mothballs, but the smell of a person, cigarettes, perfume. It’s a very particular smell, something that makes the clothing come alive. It’s something that helps you understand a person.”

Some of the skirts were stained by Kahlo’s oil paint, and one had a small, scorched hole from a cigarette.

“We respected that during the restoration process ... because it is part of history,” Rosen Zweig said in an interview.

The clothing was fumigated, studied, logged, classified and photographed for an exhibit catalog.

Besides providing a comprehensive look at Kahlo’s style, the clothes also reveal how tiny she was. Rivera, more than 6 feet tall and about 300 pounds, towered over the 5-foot-3 Kahlo, who weighed less than 100 pounds. The disparity prompted Kahlo’s mother to nickname the couple “the elephant and the dove.”

“She has such a small waist,” Rosen Zweig said. “You can’t find mannequins her size. She had a tiny waist and a very small back. Everything about her was tiny.”

Her body, crippled by disease and the bus accident, was the main topic of many of her paintings — stark self-portraits that depicted her unending pain and inability to have children.

Clothing became a way to hide or even address her physical disabilities. After suffering a broken back, she often wore a hard, plaster corset that she painted with intricate designs. During her months of bed rest, “it was a ritual to get dressed,” Rosen Zweig said.

She noted that the clothes showed how Kahlo’s style evolved. As a young woman, she wore high-neck blouses and black gloves that may have belonged to her mother. Later, she mixed loose-fitting dresses with ornate necklaces, ear rings, flowers and hair ribbons.

Rosen Zweig hopes the new exhibit will spark interest in native Mexican textiles and clothing.

She said it was hard to calculate the value of the clothes.

“You can’t put a price on the rescue of this collection,” she said.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Long-Lost Caravaggio Unveiled in Rome

Gina Doggett

Monday, November 20, 2006

ROME (AFP) - A long-lost painting by Italian master Caravaggio, resplendent after a six-year cleanup has been unveiled in Rome, where it is on loan from the private collection of Queen Elizabeth II.

“The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew,” which gathered dust and layers of varnish while in the possession of the British crown for some 400 years, was discovered in a storeroom at Hampton Court, the palace on the River Thames just west of London, where it was erroneously catalogued as a copy.

The work, valued at more than 50 million pounds (74 million euros, 96 million dollars), is being shown in Rome first in honor of Maurizio Marini, the Italian expert who first suspected that it might be an original.

The painting, probably dating from the first decade of the 17th century when Caravaggio was in Rome, depicts the scene in Saint Mark’s Gospel in which Christ calls on Peter and Andrew to follow him and “become fishers of men.”

Unusually, Christ is shown without a beard in the painting, which measures 1.3 by 1.6 meters (about four feet by five).

It is part of a small exhibition of Caravaggio paintings that will open to the public on Wednesday at the Termini Art Gallery in Rome’s central railway station, and run until January 31.

Marini came across the grime-encrusted painting, almost devoid of color, after British collector and Italian art historian Sir Denis Mahon discovered a bill of sale for a Caravaggio purchased by King Charles I in the 17th century.

“I knew it was a very important discovery, something that should be investigated a bit,” Sir Denis, 96, told a news conference Monday.

He and Marini explained that a copy usually contains an outline of the image drawn by the copyist before starting to paint, which would be visible after cleaning using X-ray and infra-red analysis.

No such outline was found, but instead there were characteristic incisions in the first layer of paint, which Caravaggio was known to use to guide his work.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who died in 1610 at age 38, was considered a pioneer of modern realism and the chiaroscuro (light and shadow) technique in oil painting.

He was also known for brawling, even killing a tennis partner over a disputed score, an act that prompted him to flee Rome to Naples and later Malta, never to return.

The restored painting, one of only about 50 extant works of the artist, will move to an exhibition of Italian Baroque and Renaissance art to open at Buckingham Palace in March.

Museum Removes Art Exhibit that Includes Deep-Fried American Flags

Associated Press

Friday, November 17, 2006

CLARKSVILLE, Tennessee: An art exhibit featuring deep-fried American flags, complete with peanut oil and black pepper, has been removed by a museum director in this military-friendly town.

Art student William Gentry said his piece, “The Fat Is in the Fire,” was a commentary on obesity in America.

“I deep-fried the flag because I’m concerned about America and about America’s health,” he said.

But the art was taken down Wednesday, less than 18 hours after it went up in this community near Fort Campbell, Tennessee.

“It’s about what the community values,” said Customs House Museum executive director Ned Crouch. “I’m representing 99 percent of our membership — educators, doctors, lawyers, military families.”

He said the timing of the piece could cause “incendiary reactions.”

Treatment of the American flag is an ongoing and passionate debate in the United States.

“Never in the history of the country has the flag been more hated or more loved,” Crouch said.

The exhibit featured three U.S. flags imprinted with such phrases as “Poor people are obese because they eat poorly” and dozens of smaller flags fried in peanut oil, egg batter, flour and black pepper.

Underground Art Featured in Providence

Chelsea Phua, Associated Press

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Anne Jordan pulled on ropes that were hanging inside a 26-foot-tall tower covered with psychedelic swirls and grids. Pots and pans clashed with each other to produce a clanging noise.

Moments later, she emerged from a doorway draped with heavy, dark pink curtains to admire other exhibits of “Wunderground,” a contemporary art exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

“It’s pretty cool you can touch the stuff and it’s not on a pedestal,” said Jordan, a senior at RISD majoring in graphic design.

“Wunderground” features eight artists whose work epitomizes an underground subculture of art, comic book, film and the local music scene. The group came to the attention of mainstream critics and curators in 2002, when three of them were selected for the Whitney Museum’s Biennial exhibition in New York, one of the most highly regarded surveys of contemporary art in America.

Their display of psychedelic video, sound, knit-costumed sculptures, lights and wallpaper caused quite a stir at the biennial, said Lawrence Rinder, chief curator for the 2002 Whitney biennial, now dean of the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

“People were amazed by it,” Rinder said. “A lot of artists were inspired.”

Now, the artists have combined their efforts in Wunderground.

Rinder considered their print work among the most amazing artwork done in the last 10 years. Their unfettered creativity allowed them to ignore convention and “experiment in the most outlandish way,” he said.

Visitors to Wunderground will find a gallery room transformed into a virtual reality filled with interactive life-size and larger-than-life installations. The artists have called this portion of the exhibition “Shangri-la-la-land.” They view it as a utopia based loosely on the concept of a village where diversity and individuality can flourish in harmony.

Just as a village might have a church, a temple or some kind of religious centerpiece, artist Xander Marro said her tower functions vaguely as a religious building. It has steeplelike structures on top. A peacock and serpent attached to two corners of her tower are symbolic animals in alchemy.

“I thought of it as being like the spiritual space of the village in some way and what, for our culture, that might mean,” Marro said. “Or ... what that would look like.”

A behemoth monster that moves periodically and an American Indian totem pole structure stand beside the tower, near to the exhibit’s entrance. Further in, visitors will encounter a volcano with scaly roots, a giant Asian-looking lantern made out of plastic bags sewn together and a cryogenic figure that watches psychedelic projections on a screen.

The installation also tells the story of an artists’ community in the west side neighborhood of Providence called Olneyville, when an abundance of old abandoned mills there provided the artists with space and cheap rent.
To make things even more affordable, many of the artists lived together in industrial mills that became known as art collectives, which also functioned for concerts for “noise music” rock bands. Some of the artists also played in these bands, which have toured in Japan and Europe.

As real estate prices rose on Providence’s West Side and developers started to eye the mills as profitable ventures, the artists were forced out or priced out from their space. The fight to save one of the collectives, called Fort Thunder, became an important art movement, said Nato Thompson, curator of contemporary art at the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art. In 2002, the mill buildings that Fort Thunder occupied were razed to make way for a strip mall.

Brian Chippendale, one of the artists who founded Fort Thunder, laments the loss in his art piece, a wooden house called “Home on the Run.” He has plastered the inside with comic strips, drawings, sketches, newspaper cuttings and writings that deride how condominium developments are driving artists out of their home and tearing apart communities.

Some of the 2,000 posters displayed wall-to-wall in the other half of the Wunderground exhibition also advertised rallies and protests against the demolition of Fort Thunder and mills like it.

Most of the posters advertised for rock band concerts, some of which were held in the mill buildings or other places that weren’t legally zoned for such events, said Judith Tannenbaum, RISD Museum’s Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art. The designs had to be cryptic so that their message was hidden from authorities but known to people involved in its subculture, she said.

“This show is built on how we’ve lived with each other, how we relate to each other through community,” Chippendale said.

Dress Codes Take on Body Art

Madlen Read, Associated Press

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Colleen Harris doesn’t fit the stereotype of the buttoned-up librarian. Her arms are covered with a pirate-queen motif and black scrolling tattoos that extend down the side of her body to her ankle. A black rose and the words “Dangerous Magic” adorn the back of her left hand, and the words “Anam Cara” (old Gaelic for “soul friend” ) letter her knuckles. The 27-year-old - who has multiple master’s degrees and a job at the University of Kentucky’s research library - feels no pressure to cover up.

“It’s not really possible at this point, unless I wore gloves,” said Harris, adding that she thinks academia has been more accepting of her body art than the corporate world would be. “I think my qualifications should speak for themselves.”

The face of the young, American worker is changing, and it’s increasingly decorated with ink and metal.

About half of people in their 20s have either a tattoo or a body piercing other than traditional earrings, according to a study published in June in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

That figure, which is higher than the national average, is growing, said Anne Laumann, the study’s co-author and a dermatologist at Northwestern University.

As a result, employers are finding that dress codes may need updating. In some cases, bosses are loosening up to attract young talent. In others, managers are adding new rules to keep body art covered up.

“In the past, there were very general dress codes. Now, I see dress codes that are five pages long,” said David Barron, a lawyer with Epstein Becker Green Wickliff & Hall PC. “Employers see a need to be very, very specific, and draw lines very clearly.”

At the medication-flavoring company Flavorx - where the average employee is about 28 years old - chief financial officer Woodie Neiss recently told human resources to add a body-art section to the dress code after an employee showed up to work with an eyebrow piercing.

A sizable portion of his 40 employees have body art, Neiss said. He knows it because he’s seen them show it off to each other in the office.

“Do whatever you want to your body, but I don’t want to be subjected to it in the workplace,” Neiss said.

He added that body art can be a distraction and especially important to hide when investors visit the office.

Usually, it’s a simple matter of discussion and compromise.

Most piercings are on the face, according to the recent study, but they can be removed. Only about 15 percent of people with tattoos have them on their face, neck or hands, so the rest can be covered by clothing.

Michael Sacks, 24, who works at the public relations firm SheaHedges Group in McLean, Va., has three tattoos - on his stomach, the initials of a friend who died; on his back, the word “Persistence” ; and on his ankle, his fraternity letters, Phi Gamma Delta.

None can be seen when he’s wearing his work clothes, he said, and that’s intentional.

“It’s a visibility issue. No one cares what you have on your body as long as you don’t have to look at it,” Sacks said. “I want to be perceived as a professional.”

It all depends on the industry.

For some companies, allowing body art can be a boon - it attracts young workers who may not feel welcome in more conservative environments, said Paul Forster, CEO of the job search Web site Indeed.com (which shows that postings for tattoo artists have surged in the past year).

Forster allows body art in the office, and about a quarter of his 25 employees have it.

“Most work is done via e-mail, instant message (or) over the phone. We don’t have those face-to-face issues,” Forster said.

Of course, at workplaces like design firms, salons, and retailers targeting the young demographic, hiring employees with body art is par for the course.

Joe Duffy - CEO of the design firm Duffy & Partners, which has developed branding for companies including Coca-Cola, BMW and Starbucks - said he hired a young woman about a year ago who used her tattoos as part of her application portfolio.

The $40 Million Elbow

Nick Paumgarten

Monday, October 16, 2006

You might have seen “Le Rêve,” Picasso’s 1932 portrait of his mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, in your college art-history textbook. The painting is owned by Steve Wynn, the casino magnate and collector of masterpieces. He acquired it in a private sale in 2001 from an anonymous collector, who had bought it at auction in 1997 for $48.4 million.

Recently, Wynn decided that he’d like to sell it, along with several other museum-quality paintings that he owns. A friend of his, the hedge-fund mogul and avid collector Steven Cohen, had coveted “Le Rêve” for years, so he and Wynn and their intermediaries worked out a deal. Cohen agreed to pay a hundred and thirty-nine million dollars for it, the highest known price ever paid for a work of art.

A few weeks ago, on a Thursday, a representative of Cohen’s came from California to inspect the painting. She removed it from the wall, took it out of its frame, and confirmed that it was in excellent shape. On Friday, she wrote her condition report, and so, according to their contract, the deal was done. All that was left was the actual exchange of money and art.

That weekend, Wynn had some friends visiting from New York—David and Mary Boies, Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi, Louise Grunwald, and Barbara Walters. They were staying, as they often do, at his hotel and casino, the Wynn Las Vegas. As they had dinner together on Friday night, Wynn told them about the sale. “The girls said, ‘We’ve got to see it tomorrow,’ ” Wynn recalled last week. “So I said, ‘I’ll be working tomorrow. Just come on up to the office.’ ” (He had recently moved “Le Rêve” there from the hotel lobby.)

The guests came at five-thirty, and Wynn ushered them in. On the wall to his left and right were several paintings, including a Matisse, a Renoir, and “Le Rêve.” The other three walls were glass, looking out onto an enclosed garden. He began to tell the story of the Picasso’s provenance. As he talked, he had his back to the picture. He was wearing jeans and a golf shirt. Wynn suffers from an eye disease, retinitis pigmentosa, which affects his peripheral vision and therefore, occasionally, his interaction with proximate objects, and, without realizing it, he backed up a step or two as he talked. “So then I made a gesture with my right hand,” Wynn said, “and my right elbow hit the picture. It punctured the picture.” There was a distinct ripping sound. Wynn turned around and saw, on Marie-Thérèse Walter’s left forearm, in the lower-right quadrant of the painting, “a slight puncture, a two-inch tear. We all just stopped. I said, ‘I can’t believe I just did that. Oh, shit. Oh, man.’”

Wynn turned around again. He put his pinkie in the hole and observed that a flap of canvas had been pushed back. He told his guests, “Well, I’m glad I did it and not you.” He said that he’d have to call Cohen and William Acquavella, his dealer in New York, to tell them that the deal was off. Then he resumed talking about his paintings, almost, but not quite, as though he hadn’t just delivered what one of the guests would later call, in an impromptu stab at actuarial math, a “forty-million-dollar elbow.”

A few hours later, they all met for dinner, and Wynn was in a cheerful mood. “My feeling was, It’s a picture, it’s my picture, we’ll fix it. Nobody got sick or died. It’s a picture. It took Picasso five hours to paint it.” Mary Boies ordered a six-litre bottle of Bordeaux, and when it was empty she had everyone sign the label, to commemorate the calamitous afternoon. Wynn signed it “Mary, it’s all about scale—Steve.” Everyone had agreed to take what one participant called a “vow of silence.” (The vow lasted a week, until someone leaked the rudiments of the story to the Post.)

The next day, Wynn finally reached his dealer, and told him, “Bill, I think I’m going to ruin your day.” The first word out of Acquavella’s mouth was “Nooo!” Later that week, Wynn’s wife, Elaine, took the painting to New York in Wynn’s jet, where she and “Le Rêve” were met by an armored truck. Cohen met them at Acquavella’s gallery, on East Seventy-ninth Street, and he agreed that the deal was off until the full extent of the damage could be ascertained. The contract, at any rate, was void. The painting wound up in the hands of an art restorer, who has told Wynn that when he’s done with it, in six or eight weeks, you won’t be able to tell that Wynn’s elbow passed through Marie-Thérèse Walter’s left forearm. Last Friday, when Wynn’s alarm went off, at 7 A.M., his wife turned to him in bed and said, “I consider this whole thing to be a sign of fate. Please don’t sell the picture.” Later that morning, Wynn called Cohen and told him that he wanted to keep the painting, after all.