Category Archives: Arts & Literature

Art Of The Garden: The Brilliant “Sunflowers” Of British Painter Charles Mahoney (1903-1968)

Charles Mahoney (1903-1968) The Garden 1950 LISS LLEWELLYN art website
Charles Mahoney (1903-1968), The Garden 1950

Charles Mahoney,(18 November 1903 – 11 May 1968): Painter, muralist, draughtsman and teacher, born Cyril Mahoney in London – his fellow-student Barnett Freedman re-christened him Charlie at the Royal College of Art, which he attended 1922-6 after a period at Beckenham School of Art under Percy Jowett. Early on, Mahoney established a reputation as a conscientious teacher.

He was at the Royal College 1928-53, from 1948-53 as a painting tutor, and was noted there for his concern for academic discipline.

Charles Mahoney Composite Plant 1954
Charles Mahoney, Composite Plant 1954

His portrait is included in Rodrigo Moynihan’s celebrated Teaching Staff of the Painting School at the Royal College of Art, 1949-50. From 1954 to 1963 he taught at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting and from 1961 to 1968 at the Royal Academy Schools. He painted murals at Morley College 1928-30 with his colleagues Eric Ravillious and Edward Bawden.

Unfortunately these murals were destroyed during World War II. The work led to further murals: at Brockley School, Kent, with Evelyn Dunbar; and at Campion Hall Lady Chapel, Oxford. His oil paintings are frequently of a religious nature. He was a skilled botanist, and many of his drawings depict his garden at Wrotham, Kent.

He exhibited at NEAC and the RA, being made an RA elect in 1968. He is represented in the Tate Gallery and other public collections. The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, held a memorial exhibition in 1975. Exhibitions were held in 2000 at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, Royal Museum and Art Gallery, Canterbury, and the Fine Art Society plc in association with Liss Fine Art.

Read more about Charles Mahoney

Podcast Interviews: Art Magazine “Ursula” Editor Randy Kennedy – “The Rare Pleasures Of Print Online”

Monocle 24 The StackMonocle 24’s “The Stack” chats with Randy Kennedy, editor of ‘Ursula’, the beautiful print quarterly from Hauser & Wirth.

‘Ursula’ is the quarterly art magazine featuring essays, profiles, interviews, original portfolios, and photography by some of the most thought-provoking writers and artists in the world, as reported by Artnet. ‘Ursula’ takes its name from the internationally admired co-founder of the gallery: patron, collector, mentor, and art world mater familias Ursula Hauser. Reflecting the inclusive values and broad perspective of the gallery she helped to establish in Zurich in 1992, ‘Ursula’ will showcase not only the work of artists and estates represented by Hauser & Wirth, but also a wide, adventurous swath of the international art world of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Art Magazine "Ursula" Covers from Hauser and Wirth

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Lockdown Art: Fashion Designers Create “Rooms With A View” (Wallpaper)

From Wallpaper.com:

Manolo Blahnik, Bath
Manolo Blahnik, Bath

As fashion designers have acclimatised to this new, four wall-defined way of life, from Beijing to Berlin, London to Longiano, we’ve invited those within our creative community to document by hand what they can see from their work desk or window. Here we present our rooms with a view.

From Manolo Blahnik to Margaret Howell, we’ve invited fashion designers to document by hand what they can see from their work desk or window, be it a view of a verdant garden landscape, or an urban snapshot of baroque architecture.

Pierre Hardy, Paris
Pierre Hardy, Paris

Read more at Wallpaper.com

 

Tributes: “Mad Magazine” Cartoonist Mort Drucker Dies At 91 (1929-2020)

Mort Drucker Five Decades of His Finest WorksMAD Magazine and DC Comics mourn the loss of Mort Drucker, whose artwork proved that parody is the sincerest form of flattery. “Mort was one of the best—maybe the best—caricature artists in the world,” said DC Chief Creative Officer and Publisher Jim Lee. “His work will continue to entertain for generations.”

Mort entered the comics field when he was 18, working as a production artist for DC. His first original piece of art was a one-pager titled “Tinker Tom Shows You How to Make Fancy Western Duds,” published in All-American Western #117 in December 1950. In 1956, Mort met with MAD publisher Bill Gaines during a Dodgers vs. Yankees World Series game. “If the Dodgers win, you’re hired,” said Gaines. They did win, and Mort began a career at MAD that would span the next five decades, and most notably brought to life the magazine’s infamous parodies of TV shows and films.

Mort won numerous awards and honors for his work, including the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year in 1987. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2011, and in 2015 became the inaugural recipient of the National Cartoonists Society’s Medal of Honor. He received an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Boston, and his TIME Magazine covers hang in the National Portrait Gallery.

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Video Profiles: 60-Year Old British Painter-Author Billy Childish Talks About “Th Future Of Art” (Artsy)

The Uncorrected Billy Childish“The art world is the same as the rest of the world,” says British artist, writer, and punk-rocker Billy Childish. “What it requires is new, more, and now.” Childish has worked defiantly and prolifically outside of the mainstream since his expulsion from art school in the early 1980s. To the polymath—whose paintings, poems, novels, and music draw heavily from his autobiography—art is a deeply personal experience that should not rely on external validation, whether from critics or audiences. From his painting studio located on a historic dockyard in Kent, United Kingdom, Childish speaks passionately about the freedom that comes with self-validation. When asked about his perspective on the future of art, he demurs. “People think we’re continually ascending a mountain to success or to enlightenment,” he says. “It’s here and now and this is it.”

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Art History: “Rembrandt’s Self Portraits” – Oxford Ashmolean Museum (2020)

Curator An Van Camp tells us about Rembrandt’s obsession with self portraits and how he improved his skill throughout his life.

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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669) was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history. Unlike most Dutch masters of the 17th century, Rembrandt’s works depict a wide range of style and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, and biblical and mythological themes as well as animal studies. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch art (especially Dutch painting), although in many ways antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was extremely prolific and innovative and gave rise to important new genres. Like many artists of the Dutch Golden Age, such as Jan Vermeer of Delft, Rembrandt was also an avid art collector and dealer.

From Wikipedia

Art: Virtual Exhibition Tour Of “Picasso And Paper” (Royal Academy)

Experience our Picasso and Paper exhibition from your own home in this video tour of the galleries, created before the Royal Academy had to close its doors due to coronavirus.

Picasso didn’t just draw on paper — he tore it, burnt it, and made it three-dimensional. From studies for ‘Guernica’ to a 4.8-metre-wide collage, this exhibition brings together more than 300 works on paper spanning the artist’s 80-year career.

Installation views of the Picasso and Paper exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. © Succession Picasso/DACS 2020. Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London and the Cleveland Museum of Art in partnership with the Musée national Picasso-Paris.

World’s Top Architecture: “Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen” To Open In 2021 (MVRDV Architects)

Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen (in Rotterdam, Netherlands) is the first art storage facility in the world that offers access to a museum’s complete collection. The Depot has a different dynamic to that of the museum: there are no exhibitions, but you can browse amongst 151,000 artworks, alone or with a guide, and get behind-the-scenes glimpses of – among other things – conservation and restoration.

The design – a reflective round volume – responds to its surroundings, Rotterdam’s Museumpark in which it will be completed in 2020, doors will open in 2021.

Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen by MVRDV Architects The Netherlands 2020

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MVRDV Architects Portfolio
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