Category Archives: Arts & Literature
Cultural Views: Tattooed Freight Trucks Of Nepal
Throughout Nepal, large freight trucks painted by artists provide special visual entertainment for travelers along the highways and dangerous mountain roads of the Himalayas. These creatively painted scenes and sayings can be clever, witty and even profound – offering food for thought to the viewer. Former Peace Corps volunteer and UC San Diego lecturer emeritus Ron Ranson, along with filmmaker Sudarson Karki, document the Nepali custom of painting trucks with icons of their country, spiritual life, European sports teams and even major movies like “Titanic.”
History: Legacy Of French Playwright Molière
He’s known as the father of French #theatre, but the influence of #Molière goes well beyond France. His impact is still felt today all over the world. To mark the 400th #anniversary of the famed playwright’s birth, we speak to Georges Forestier, professor at the Sorbonne and a specialist in the works of Molière. We also take you on a tour of Molière’s Paris.
Profiles: A Day With Plein Air Painter Mark Shasta
Exhibitions: 19th Century European & American Art At The Denver Art Museum
The department of European and American Art Before 1900 oversees a collection that includes more than 3,000 artworks and is composed of painting, sculpture, and works on paper, with significant strengths in early Italian Renaissance, 19th century French painting, and British art from 1400 to 1900.
The Denver Art Museum began acquiring notable examples of European art as early as the 1930s, with donations from Samuel H. Kress, Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim, and the Havemeyers, to name a few. Their generosity helped initiate a collection that grew in time through gifts and purchases.
Exhibits: ‘Philip C. Curtis – Landscapes of Arizona’ (Phoenix Art Museum)
Philip C. Curtis saw the desert through a lens of magic realism.
Landscape remains one of the most popular subjects for artists visiting and residing in Arizona. Philip C. Curtis, while not known as a landscape painter, draws extensively on that subject. Curtis came to the state in 1937 to establish the Phoenix Federal Art Center under the Federal Art Project, a New Deal program. He left two years later to head a similar facility in Des Moines, Iowa, but returned to Arizona in 1947.
Settling in Scottsdale, he painted surreal compositions, with figures in Victorian costumes set in the desert. Arizona’s landscapes were a rich source of inspiration for him, and while his canvases do not portray any recognizable geological features, his work may be contextualized within the work of a broad spectrum of artists who came to the state. Curtis saw the desert through a lens of magic realism. This differed from Maxfield Parrish, Eugene Berman, and other artists who preferred more representational modes.
Views: Jasper Johns & Paul Cézanne – Unfinished Art
What was Jasper Johns’s reaction to seeing Paul Cézanne’s The Large Bathers? Curator Carlos Basualdo recalls standing in front of the painting and Johns’s fascination with the finished and unfinished aspects of the artwork.
“Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” is on view through February 13. http://ow.ly/lZkg30s4V3s
History Of Art: Albrecht Dürer’s Lasting Influence
Even if you don’t know the name, chances are you’ve seen a reproduction of one of his prints. What is it about his work that has made it last? Through paintings, drawings, prints, and letters, our exhibition ‘Dürer’s Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist’ brings to life this art history megastar and the people and places he visited.
Art History: ‘Rubens – Picturing Antiquity’
“I think it just shows very well how Rubens worked, how he got the inspiration from antiquity, but he transforms it into something completely new and very alive.”
The Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens is most famous for his dynamic, colorful renderings of religious scenes and mythological stories. Yet Rubens’s work was also deeply inspired by the art of the past. He was a keen student of classical antiquity, engaging with ancient sculptures, coins, gems, and cameos both at home and in his travels through Italy. His friendships with antiquarians, patrons, and scholars provided a network for vibrant intellectual exchanges that informed the artist’s work.
In this episode, Getty curators Anne T. Woollett, Davide Gasparotto, and Jeffrey Spier discuss their exhibition Rubens: Picturing Antiquity, which explores how Rubens was affected by and, in turn, transformed the classical past in his paintings, drawings, and designs. The exhibition, which received major support from Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder and generous support from the Leonetti/O’Connell Family Foundation, is on view at the Getty Villa through January 24, 2022.
For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-peter-paul-rubens-and-the-arts-of-antiquity
Art Views: Watercolors By Thomas W. Schaller (2021)
“In many ways, why we paint is more important than what or how we paint. What we create is more than just something we do, it expresses who we are. My work is a study in contrasts: light and dark, vertical and horizontal, warm and cool, the real and the imagined, and elements of the past, present, and future. I design with conflicting elements – allowing them to find balance and resolution on the surface of the paper in surprising and expressive ways, trying never to paint just what I look at, but rather how it is I see; how I react to the world I see around me and within. The results are reflections of my attempt at becoming more fully present in the process.“
Thomas W. Schaller is an award-winning artist, architect, and author based in Los Angeles. As a renowned architectural artist, he received a Graham Foundation Grant and was a two-time recipient of the Hugh Ferriss Memorial Prize. He has authored three books; the best-selling, and AIA award winner, Architecture in Watercolor (VNR – McGraw Hill) The Art of Architectural Drawing (J.Wiley and Sons), and Thomas W. Schaller, Architect of Light : Watercolor Paintings by a Master – a retrospective of his recent artwork released by North Light Books / F+W Media and now Penguin / Random House, NYC in 2018.
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