Category Archives: Art
Art Videos: American Painter Cy Twombly’s ‘Apollo 11’ Homage (1969)
In the summer of 1969, Cy Twombly made a series of paintings inspired by the Apollo 11 space mission.
Born in Lexington, Virginia, in 1928, Edwin Parker ‘Cy’ Twombly studied art in Boston and at the avant-garde Black Mountain College in North Carolina. After graduating, he served as a cryptologist in the US Military — an experience that left a distinctive mark on his artistic style.
Learn more: https://www.christies.com/features/Mo…
Art: The ‘Dangerously Independent Women’ Of Italian Painter Vittorio Corcos (1859-1933)
He went on to become a highly respected portraitist, counting Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Benito Mussolini and opera star Lina Cavalieri among his subjects. In Coy’s view, however, his portraits were relatively conventional offerings — and Corcos’s ‘best work’ was his turn-of-the-century imagery of ‘dangerously independent women’.
Compare the biographies of Vittorio Corcos (1859-1933) and Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), and a remarkable number of similarities become apparent. Both were born into Jewish families in the Italian port city of Livorno in the second half of the 19th century; both would settle — and artistically come of age — in Paris. Both would even excel at the same type of paintings: their provocative depictions of women.
Their reputations, however, have suffered widely different fates. Modigliani, who struggled to sell much work before his death at the age of 35, is today regarded as a master of Modernism. Corcos, by contrast, who enjoyed a long and prosperous international career, posthumously became a rather forgotten figure.
Cocktails With A Curator: ‘Fragonard’s Progress Of Love, Part II’ (Frick Video)
In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon maps the century-long journey of Jean Honoré Fragonard’s Progress of Love series from Paris to Provence to London to New York. Fragonard’s career faltered because of his association with the ancien régime, and the Progress of Love was in many respects his last great accomplishment before he died in penury in 1806. In 2021, visitors will be able to experience three of the canvases for the first time in decades when the series is displayed in its entirety at Frick Madison. For today’s episode, Xavier has paired this fourteen-canvas parable of love with a mixed drink suitable for the occasion, a brandy-spiked Champagne Cocktail.
To view these objects in detail, please visit our website: https://www.frick.org/progressloveSHOW LESS
Arts & Culture Video: ‘Artists For New York’
‘As New Yorkers, we’re thrivers … We just keep coming back. We keep surviving.’
Our introductory film features the voices of some of our ‘Artists for New York’ partner organizations on why New York is and will always be a vital place for art, and all those that love, celebrate and need it.
Explore our ‘Artists for New York’ editorial page: https://bit.ly/34gIq24
Profiles: London Artist Flora Yukhnovich – ‘Art Of Tiepolo As Abstraction’
…she decided to trace Tiepolo’s travels across Europe, from Venice to Germany and Spain, riffing on the works he created in these different places. ‘I realised I had basically followed Tiepolo’s journey since leaving Venice towards his death,’ she notes. ‘It was quite weird and morbid but also kind of appropriate for finishing off my Tiepolo cycle.’
Déjà vu isn’t dangerous for Flora Yukhnovich – it’s part of her art. ‘I think what I find really rewarding about working from old paintings is the moment when it all comes together and you feel like you recognise it,’ she tells me. ‘It’s such a weird, instinctive feeling […] like kissing an old friend.’
A shift in interest coincided with an invitation to Venice, via a residency with Victoria Miro. It was while living there during the summer of 2019 that she became immersed in the work of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his own particular brand of Venetian rococo. The resulting exhibition at the Victoria Miro gallery is called ‘Barcarole’ after the song sung by Venetian gondoliers, a tune known for its rhythmic sway in time with lapping lagoon waves.
Modern Art: ‘Shangri-La, 2017’ By Matthew Wong
An invitation into any artist’s imagined world involves an intimacy rarely encountered outside of portraiture, but Matthew Wong does this without fear by relying on our one nugget of shared understanding – Shangri-la. What is paradise after all but knowing and being known? “You sit in front of this painting, and it overwhelms you.” – reveals our specialist Isabella Lauria, –
“We get lots in our dreams, and this painting makes me feel lost in the best way.” Post-War and Contemporary Art Day sale, October 7 2020
View sale highlights: https://www.christies.com/features/Po..
Matthew Wong was a Canadian artist. Self-taught as a painter, Wong received critical acclaim for his work before his death in 2019 at the age of 35. Roberta Smith, co-chief art critic at The New York Times, has praised Wong as “one of the most talented painters of his generation.”
Cocktails With A Curator: ‘Fragonard’s Progress Of Love’ (The Frick Video)
In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” join Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon as he discusses Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Progress of Love paintings and the capricious countess who commissioned the series, Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis XV. Delve into the tumultuous life of Du Barry, who was born in poverty and clashed with Marie-Antoinette at Versailles. Tune in next week to discover how the Progress of Love series made its way from eighteenth-century France to the Frick’s beloved Fragonard Room.
To view these objects in detail, please visit our website: https://www.frick.org/progress_love
Video Profile: Icelandic Illustrator Kristjana S. Williams In “Wonderland”
Step inside the eye-popping studio of Icelandic illustrator Kristjana S. Williams. Kristjana’s work blends traditional Victorian engravings with digital collage techniques to create layered landscapes full of hidden details. Here, we see a sneak preview of her latest V&A commission: creating a series of original illustrations for a new book, accompanying the exhibition Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser.
Art Video: ‘The Mystery Of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers’
The eventful history of Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, which have changed hands many times since they were painted for Paul Gauguin’s arrival in Arles.
Van Gogh’s paintings of Sunflowers are among his most famous. He did them in Arles, in the south of France, in 1888 and 1889. Vincent painted a total of five large canvases with sunflowers in a vase, with three shades of yellow ‘and nothing else’.
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