Choreography: JJ, Renan
Sunday, July 31, 2022
Saturday, July 30, 2022
Friday, July 29, 2022
Monday, July 25, 2022
Sunday, July 24, 2022
Alphonse Mucha
Art Appreciation
Alphonse Mucha was a Bohemian and Czech painter, illustrator, and graphic artist who was born on July 24, 1860. He is best known for the decorative theatrical posters, particularly those of French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt.
Later in life, he focused on painting a series of twenty monumental canvases known as The Slav Epic, which depicts the history of the Slavic people.
His daughter, Jaroslava Muchová help restore these canvases which were hidden from Nazis.
From an early, Mucha showed talent in not only drawing but also music. Supposedly, he drew exclusively with his left hand and was an alto singer and violin player.
At the age of 19, while in Vienna, he was employed as an apprentice scenery painter for Vienna theaters. There he met Hans Makart, an Austrian painter, who influenced Mucha's later work.
In 1885, Mucha moved to Munich where he became friends with notable Slavic artists. While in Munich, he founded a Czech students' club and contributed political illustrations to nationalist publications in Prague.
A few years later, he moved to Paris.
While in Paris, Mucha began providing illustrations for magazine publications and novels, which provided a regular income. One investment he made was purchasing a camera that used glass-plate negatives. This allowed him to use pictures he took to compose drawings.
In the 1890s, Art Nouveau was the modern style objecting the academic art of the 19th century. This would play an important role in Mucha's work.
At the end of the 1894, Mucha was asked to draw a last-minute poster for actress Sarah Bernhardt to advertise the continuation of the play Gismonda. Mucha created a life-size poster of Bernhardt in the costume of a Byzantine noblewoman with decorative Byzantine mosaic tiles behind her head. The poster appeared on the streets of Paris on January 1st, 1895. Mucha became famous overnight.
His new fame landed big advertising commissions for JOB cigarette papers, Ruinart Champagne, Lefèvre-Utile biscuits, Nestlé baby food, Idéal Chocolate, the Beers of the Meuse, Moët-Chandon champagne, Trappestine brandy, and Waverly and Perfect bicycles.
In 1896, Mucha introduced a series of illustrations that was purely for decoration known as The Seasons, which depicted four different women in decorative floral settings representing the seasons of the year. Posters of beautiful women became a common format.
The Paris Universal Exposition of 1900 allowed Mucha to move in a different direction toward large-scale historical paintings and express his Czech patriotism.
In 1904, Mucha sailed to the United States to find funding for his grand project, The Slav Epic. Considered a celebrity in New York, Mucha met Charles Richard Crane, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist. Crane commissioned Mucha to make a portrait of his daughter in traditional Slavic style. Mucha would then later use Crane's daughter as the model for the Czechoslovak 100 koruna bill.
A few years later, Crane agreed to fund Mucha's project.
The Slav Epic was shown in Prague twice in Mucha's lifetime, in 1919 and 1928. It was then rolled up and put in storage.
Gismonda (1894)
Painting, part of the series The Arts (1898)
Slavs in their Original Homeland:
Between the Turanian Whip and the Sword of the Goths,
part of the series The Slave Epic (1912)
Saturday, July 23, 2022
Friday, July 22, 2022
Wednesday, July 20, 2022
László Moholy-Nagy
Art appreciation
Source: Wikipedia
Born on July 20, 1895, László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian artist known for his constructivism, integrating industrial and technology into design.
At age 16, László was a writer. Some of his poems were published in local daily newspapers. A couple of years later, he studied law at the University of Budapest.
While servicing in the Austro-Hungarian army, he began tinkering with sketching, watercolors, writing about his wartime experiences. After being injured and then discharged, László attended a private art school.
In the early 1920, László moved to Berlin. He met photographer and writer Lucia Schulz, who he then married. She introduced him to making photograms--a photographic technique using light-sensitive photographic paper. They separated in 1929.
In 1923, he took a teaching and leadership role at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. There he developed his art of photography, typography, sculpture, painting, printmaking, film-making, and industrial design.
He's credited for coining the term Neues Sehen (New Vision), which became an art movement of photographic expression where the lens of the camera becomes a second eye for looking at the world. László is also considered the first interwar artist to suggest the use of scientific equipments to make art.
In collaboration with Hungarian architect Istvan Seboek, he constructed an early example of light art called the Light-Space Modulator, a kinetic sculpture using industrial materials like reflective metals and plexiglass. It was featured at the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in 1930.
László put his creativity in photography, theatre stage design, advertisement, writer, and filmmaker. In 1931, he met actress and scriptwriter Sibylle Pietzsch and got married the following year. They collaborated to make the classic film Ein Lichtspiel: schwarz weiss grau ("A Lightplay: Black White Gray"), a film based on the Light-Space Modulator.
In 1935, László moved his family to England after the Nazis came to power in Germany. In England, he worked in commercial design, architectural photography, special effects designer, and filmmaking.
During this time, he began experimenting with painting on transparent plastics, like Perspex. László created kinetic sculptures and abstract light effects for the Neo-classic film Things to Come.
His artworks were included in the infamous Degenerate Art exhibition, held by the Nazis in Munich in 1937. The exhibition included works from internationally renowned artists and was designed to inflame public opinion against modernism.
In 1937, László moved to Chicago to become the director of the New Bauhaus. Although the school closed after a year due to financial backing, László opened the School of Design in Chicago, which then became part of the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
For the remainder of his life, László continued during commercial work design. He produced artworks in multiple media, including using static and mobile sculptures in transparent plastic.
He passed away on November 24, 1946 after being diagnosed with leukemia.
Light Space Modulator (1922-1930)
Perpe (1919)
Vertical black, red, and blue (1945)
via Hauser & Wirth
Monday, July 18, 2022
Body Paint: Dania - Open Space
Model/Artist: Dania Mitsubisha
Videographer/Artist: Casual Causal
Music: Dream by YangRae
via Casual Causal
Sunday, July 17, 2022
Saturday, July 16, 2022
Friday, July 15, 2022
Sunday, July 10, 2022
Saturday, July 9, 2022
Friday, July 8, 2022
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
José María Velasco Gómez
Art Appreciation
Born on July 6, 1840, José María Velasco Gómez was known as a painter who made Mexican geography a symbol of national identity. A landscape painting of the Valley of Mexico is displayed in the Vatican Museum.
Velasco's Mexican landscapes gained international reputation and a sought after collection in the United States. He gained international recognition receiving a gold medal of the Mexican National Expositions of Bellas Artes in 1874 and 1876, a gold medal of Philadelphia International Exposition in 1876, and medal of Paris Universal Exposition in 1889.
Self-portrait (1894)
Valley of Mexico (1891)
Oaxaca Cathedral (1887)
Sources:
Wikipedia
Tuesday, July 5, 2022
Chuck Close
Art Appreciation
American painter Chuck Close was known for large scale photorealistic and abstract portraits.
Born on July 5, 1940, in Monroe, Washington, Close began painting at a very young age. In an interview, he mentioned asking his parents for an easel and a set of oil paints when he was five. He added that his parents were supportive of his artistic ambitions.
Close received a Bachelors of Arts from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1962. He then received a Master in Fine Arts from Yale University in 1964. After Yale, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on a Fulbright grant.
Close's first solo exhibition was held at the University of Massachusetts Art Gallery, which was promptly closed because of nudity.
Close was a master in various drawing and painting techniques. It is said his early airbrush techniques inspired the development of the ink jet printer.
His process used a blend of grids and topographic maps of similar colors. After "The Event" which led him to be wheelchair-bound, Close relied on his assistants to create low-resolution grid squares -- pixelated form.
Throughout his career, Close was also a printmaker. His first prints, made in 1972, were made on 3x4 feet copper plates. In the mid-80s he worked with Tadashi Toda, a highly respected woodblock printer in Kyoto.
He received numerous recognitions including a National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 2000. He was appointed to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities by President Barack Obama. He resigned that role along with 16 in response to President Donald Trump's comments following the Charlottesville event.
Close passed away on August 19, 2021 from congestive heart failure.
Self-portrait (2012)
Robert Rauschenberg (1998)
Paul Simon (2017)
"Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress" by Marion Cajori
Sources:
Wikipedia
https://www.blendspace.com/lessons/vJqhdJaaJ2Hjzw/6th-chuck-close-self-portraits
https://brooklynrail.org/2008/06/art/chuck-close-with-phong-bui
https://www.ulae.com/artists/chuck-close/1998-robert/
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/chuck-close-paul-simon
https://youtu.be/hRfe1skdQfA
Sunday, July 3, 2022
Saturday, July 2, 2022
Friday, July 1, 2022
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