Category Archives: Arts & Literature

Artist Profile: Russian Abstract Painter Wassily Kandinsky (Sotheby’s)

Wassily Kandinsky
Wasslily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky is widely considered one of the key artists in the development of 20th century abstraction. In this video, discover how an ability to see colours as sounds, and a fascination with spirituality in art, led Kandinsky to his breakthrough. Our upcoming cross-category ‘Rembrandt to Richter’ Evening Sale (28 July | London) features two jewel-like works by Kandinsky. ‘Murnau – Schloss Und Kirche II’ is an oil from Kandinsky’s sought-after 1908-1911 period. ‘Ohne Titel (Komposition)’ from 1914-15, is an exquisite watercolour in which Kandinsky finds harmony in colours that represent spirituality and intense passion. Both works come from an outstanding family collection of works from the European avant-garde.

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (1866 – 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as the pioneer of abstract art. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art school. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics.

Artwork Tours: Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Bedroom” (Art Institute Chicago)

On this episode of Art Institute Essentials Tour, take a closer look at The Bedroom, painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1889. Vincent van Gogh painted three versions, including this one, of his bedroom in the “Yellow House” in Arles, France. To van Gogh, this picture symbolized relaxation and peace. However, to our eyes the canvas seems to teem with nervous energy, instability, and turmoil—an effect heightened by the sharply receding perspective.

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New Arts & Culture Books: “La Colombe d’Or – Saint Paul de Vence” (Assouline)

La Colombe d'Or - Assouline“Provence has a treasure; it’s a Colombe d’Or. It has the precious scent of thyme and nostalgia and the golden colour of olive oil and happy days. The Colombe is a part of my life. For me, it’s a place that’s as full of promise as of magnificent memories. The Colombe is indefinable, inimitable. I’m happy that today a book brings back the atmosphere of this place which is like no other in the world.”

La Colombe d’Or hotel and restaurant in the South of France is known all over the world as a privileged place where the Provençal art de vivre goes hand in hand with an astonishing private COLLECTION of modern art.

La Colombe d'Or - Assouline

First opened in 1920 as Chez Robinson, a café-bar with an open-air terrace, it quickly became a very popular meeting place and expanded into a small hotel and restaurant. The friendly atmosphere together with owner Paul Roux’s deep interest in the arts attracted many artists of the day, and the walls were soon covered by paintings, often exchanged for a stay or a few meals. As regular visitors to this beautiful place, Matisse, Braque, Léger, Calder, César, and many other artists have left magnificent works that now form part of the unique setting, including splendid pages in the fascinating guest books—presented to the world for the first time in this volume—in which the greatest artists of our time have drawn and signed moments of happiness. The next generation of the Roux family continues to care for the Colombe d’Or, and the art COLLECTION is still growing today.

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New Literary Podcasts: “Consider The Lemur” By Katherine Rundell (LRB)

Consider The Lemur - Katherine Rundell

It is​ probably best not to take advice direct and unfiltered from the animal kingdom – but lemurs are, I think, an exception. They live in matriarchal troops, with an alpha female at their head. 

LRB PodcastThe first lemur I ever met was a female, and she tried to bite me, which was fair, because I was trying to touch her, and humans have done nothing to recommend themselves to lemurs. She was an indri lemur, living in a wildlife sanctuary outside Antananarivo; she had an infant, which was riding not on her front, like a baby monkey, but on her back, like a miniature Lester Piggott. She had wide yellow eyes. William Burroughs, in his lemur-centric eco-surrealist novella Ghost of Chance, described the eyes of a lemur as ‘changing colour with shifts of the light: obsidian, emerald, ruby, opal, amethyst, diamond’. The stare of this indri resembled that of a young man at a nightclub who urgently wishes to tell you about his belief system, but her fur was the softest thing I have ever touched. I was a child, and the indri, which is the largest extant species of lemur, came up to my ribs when standing on her hind legs. She looked, as lemurs do, like a cross between a monkey, a cat, a rat and a human.

Top New Art Books: “The Irascibles: Painters Against The Museum – New York, 1950” (July 2020)

The first documentation of the legendary 1950 showdown between 18 leading abstract expressionists and the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1950, 18 American abstract painters signed an open letter addressed to the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to express their intense disapproval of the museum’s contemporaneous exhibit American Painting Today: 1950. The artists were William Baziotes, James Brooks, Fritz Bultman, Jimmy Ernst, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Weldon Kees, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Theodoros Stamos, Hedda Sterne, Clyfford Still and Bradley Walker Tomlin.

This artistic coalition, which included many members of the New York School and is now considered a watershed movement in mid-20th-century American art history, challenged the museum’s policies for their narrow understanding of what made certain art worth exhibiting. Though they resisted being labeled as a collective, media coverage of the museum boycott, which included a now-famous group portrait in Life magazine taken by photographer Nina Leen, ultimately contributed to the success of the 18 “irascibles” in what became known as the abstract expressionist movement.

This publication collects 18 paintings by the artists, images from Leen’s photoshoot and extensive documentation of the letter-writing process with relevant catalogs and magazines. Featuring more than 230 illustrations alongside original essays by several art historians and curators that examine the complex history of the New York School, this volume serves as a time capsule of the exciting period of early abstract expressionism in the United States.

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The World’s Top Artists: American Painter Eric Johnson – “Masters Style”

Eric Johnson is a Boston based Painter and instructor at The Academy of Realist Art Boston who is devoted to the preservation and growth of traditional painting. He aspires towards adding his own link into the chain of tradition by mastering the working methods of the old masters who he admires and employing those methods into his own working process. 

Eric Johnson - The Story of We -As a complete painter he aspires to reach a high level of verisimilitude and truth in his works on a variety of subject matters from portrait, still life and landscape. Eric primarily makes all of the pigments and paints to create each prepossessing painting. Eric yearns that every new presentation to beauty and truth can show us the old beauty and the old truth only seen from a different angle and  colored by a different medium. 

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Top New Animated Videos: “In My Particular Case” By Chico Jofilsan (2020)

Direction, design and animation: Chico Jofilsan

Music & sound design: Antfood
Voice actor: Chris Gibbs
Script: Chico Jofilsan & Duda Fonseca
Editing and proofreading: Laura Zuñiga
Live action support and actors: Duda Fonseca, Lucía Yáñez, Micaela Cantaro & Pablo Yáñez

How to choose an idea among so many others? This seems to be an endless question. This short film by Chico Jofilsan is a parody of that particular moment that seems further from us every single day: the idea of the perfect idea. In a world in which focus no longer stands out dispersion occupies the foreground. And this is the main theme of this film that shows different resources of animation in adapting to the rhythm of our minds. After all, what other art, if not animation, is capable of shaping so many imaginary worlds?

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Artist Profile: Russian Post-Impressionist Vera Rockline (1896-1934)

From Christie’s (July 9, 2020):

Vera Rockline (1896-1934), Vue de Tiflis, 1919.
Vera Rockline (1896-1934), Vue de Tiflis, 1919.

Vue de Tiflis  is a stunning vision of that city, painted in a manner inspired by Exter’s Cubo-Futurism. Tiflis was renowned then, as it still is now, for a combination of narrow medieval streets and Art Nouveau architecture. In this work, Rockline warps and fragments such features to the point of semi-abstraction: planes intersect and overlap, suggesting the restless energy and bohemian buzz of the Georgian capital.

Christie's LogoWhen she died in April 1934, aged just 37, Vera Rockline was at the peak of her fame. The Russian-born emigrée had made quite a name for herself after moving to Paris in 1921. Obituaries spoke of an ‘incomparable loss’ and a ‘prodigious talent’.

Born in Moscow in 1897 to a Russian father and French mother, Rockline moved to Kiev to apprentice for Aleksandra (or Alexandra) Exter. The latter was a cutting-edge figure whose art fused Cubist and Futurist elements. As civil war racked the former Russian Empire in the wake of 1917’s Bolshevik revolution, however, Vera and her husband fled to Tiflis (modern-day Tbilisi) in Georgia.

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Reviews: Director Of Film “The Truth”, Scholar Joyce Zonana’s Translation Of “Malicroix” (LARB Podcast)

Los Angeles Review of BooksThis week, Medaya speaks with acclaimed filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda about his new film, The Truth (La Vérité), starring French film screen legends Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche. Kore-eda discusses complicated family dynamics, the relationship between art and truth-telling and what brought him to France. 

In our second interview, Kate and Medaya are joined by scholar and translator Joyce Zonana, who discusses her translation of Henri Bosco’s 1946 novel Malicroix. This is the first time the French novel has been translated into English.

Cocktails With A Curator: “Riesener, Commode and Secrétaire” (The Frick)

In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” join Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon as he explores the royal provenance of two pieces of furniture at the Frick made by Jean-Henri Riesener. Sometimes overlooked by visitors, Xavier encourages us to take a closer look at this exquisite commode and secrétaire set. In celebration of these works of art and the upcoming Bastille Day, this week’s complementary cocktail is the Kir Royale.