Tag Archives: Arts & Literature

INTERVIEW: Argentinian Artist Tomás Saraceno – “The Art of Noticing”

Join us – if you dare – as we follow the acclaimed Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno into his installations of intricate spider webs inhabited by solitary, social and semi-social spiders, bridging the architectures of each other’s webs.

In the video, Saraceno talks about how spiders mirror human beings and help us understand ourselves and the way we live. “Every day, I try to enter territories, or thoughts, or ways of working, which might challenge ourselves and might challenge how we see the world.”

Observing a spider in its web for more than twenty minutes, Saraceno argues, can completely change your life and way of noticing things, revealing an unseen world. In connection to this, he feels that art and science – as well as other forms of knowledge – combined, can help us “form new alliances between disciplines and lose our comfort zone of operating and seeing and perceiving and being in the world. To try to find new ways to work and to be.”

Tomás Saraceno (b. 1973) is an Argentinian artist. Saraceno is particularly known for his large-scale, interactive installations and floating sculptures, as well as his interdisciplinary approach to art. With his practice, he explores new sustainable ways of inhabiting the environment.

His work has been exhibited at prominent venues all over the world, including the 58th La Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. Saraceno’s work is also part of international collection such as Bauhaus Museum in Weimar, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and SFMoMA in San Francisco.

In 2015, he launched the Aerocene Foundation – an open-source community project for artistic and scientific exploration of environmental issues. Relating to arachnology research, Saraceno is the first person to have scanned, reconstructed and re-imagined spiders’ woven spatial habitats.

For more see: https://studiotomassaraceno.org/about/ Tomás Saraceno was interviewed by Helle Fagralid at his studio in Berlin in November 2019. Camera: Rasmus Quistgaard Edited by Klaus Elmer Produced by Helle Fagralid Cover photo: Tomás Saraceno. ‘Social… Quasi Social… Solitary… Spiders… On Hybrid Cosmic Webs’, 2013. Installation view. Detail. Courtesy of the artist and Esther Schipper Gallery, Berlin Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2020

COCKTAILS WITH A CURATOR: “TITIAN’S ARETINO” (VIDEO)

In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” celebrate the 444th anniversary of Titian’s death by delving into the tumultuous life of Pietro Aretino, one of the most celebrated—and reviled—literary figures of the Italian Renaissance. Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon examines Titian’s portrait of Aretino at the Frick and the friendship between the Venetian painter and the acid-tongued writer, known to his contemporaries as the “scourge of princes.” This week’s complementary cocktail is the Bellini, a mixture of Prosecco and white-peach puree created by the Cipriani family in Venice and named for Titian’s teacher, Giovanni Bellini.

Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio, known in English as Titian, was an Italian painter during the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno. During his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, ‘from Cadore’, taken from his native region. 

Top Art History Podcasts: “Michelangelo’s Drawings – Mind Of The Master”

Michelangelo is among the most influential and impressive artists of the Italian High Renaissance. His lifelike sculptures and powerful paintings are some of the most recognizable works in Western art history. He also drew prolifically, making sketch after sketch of figures in slightly varying poses, focusing on form and gesture.

However, remarkably few of these drawings remain today, many of them burned by the artist himself, others lost or damaged over the centuries.

A recent exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Michelangelo: Mind of the Master, brought together more than two dozen of Michelangelo’s surviving drawings—including designs for the Sistine Chapel ceiling and The Last Judgment—to shed light on the artist’s creativity and working method. In this episode, co-curators of this exhibition, Julian Brooks and Edina Adam, discuss the master and what we can learn from his works on paper.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

Artists: Ceramicist Raina Lee – “Glaze Chemistry In Her Treehouse Studio”

THE MODERN HOUSE (AUG 2020): “I like to make things with unusual textures and I use a lot of heavy glazes, which either bubble or foam up, and I’m interested in the ways the glaze chemistry can make different textures. I’ve been making pieces with a sort of volcanic surface a lot recently, which is achieved by an element in the glaze recipe making tiny explosions in kiln, and then cooling it down very quickly so they set.”

In the first of a new series, Studio Visits, in which we’ll be meeting artists, designers and makers in their place of work, LA-based ceramist Raina Lee invites us into her treehouse studio and gallery space for a talk about her creative process.

Raina, how did you get into ceramics?

“I was a journalist in the tech and video game industry, and I still do some writing now. I happened to be living near a ceramics studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and I decided to take a class. I was enthralled.

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“It was so exciting to do something physical and work the clay with my hands – I just fell in love with it. Writing is very abstract and a lot of the time you work on something or pitch an idea and it doesn’t work out, by there’s always a physical end result when making ceramics.”

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Cocktails With A Curator: “Vase Japon” (Frick Video)

In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” examine one of the Frick’s recent acquisitions, the Sèvres “Vase Japon,” with Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon. A unique interpretation of a Chinese (not Japanese) bronze vase from the Han Dynasty, the object represents the 18th-century influence of China on European porcelain design. This week’s program is paired with a Long Island Iced Tea.

To view this object in detail, please visit our website: https://collections.frick.org/objects…

ARTWORK VIDEO TOUR: Gustave Caillebotte’s “Paris Street; Rainy Day”

On this episode of Art Institute Essentials Tour, take a closer look at Paris Street; Rainy Day, painted by Gustave Caillebotte in 1877. This complex intersection represents in microcosm the changing urban milieu of late nineteenth-century Paris. Considered the artist’s masterpiece, Caillebotte strikingly captured a vast, stark modernity, complete with life-size figures strolling in the foreground and wearing the latest fashions.

Travels With A Curator: “Genoa” (The Frick Video)

In this week’s episode of “Travels with a Curator,” join Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon on a journey to Genoa, one of his favorite cities in Italy. A rich maritime and financial center in the 17th century, Genoa was a natural draw for artists at the time, including the great Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck. The Frick owns three portraits painted by Van Dyck while he resided in Genoa, allowing viewers to peek into the past at a flourishing city at the height of its power and influence.

To see these paintings in detail, please visit our website: https://collections.frick.org/objects…

https://collections.frick.org/objects…

 

Artist Profiles: Canadian Painter Sophia Morrison

In the field of painting, Sophia Morrison explores composition and design in inks, watercolour, acrylics and mixed media.  Her experimental approach allows for elements of surprise and discovery.  Each of her paintings is an adventure and any subject may become part of the process.

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Cocktails with a Curator: “Bertoldo’s Shieldbearer”

In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” join Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon in sipping on a refreshing Daiquiri as he unravels the mystery behind one of the Frick’s exquisite bronze sculptures, “Shield Bearer” by Bertoldo di Giovanni. Together with Xavier, decode details of the work that may point to the identity of the figure portrayed.
To view this object in detail, please visit our website: https://collections.frick.org/objects/41

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Artist Profile Videos: German Painter Georg Baselitz (Gagosian)

Richard Calvocoressi narrates a tour of an exhibition of new paintings by Georg Baselitz in San Francisco, describing the visual effect of these luminous compositions and explaining their relationship to earlier works by the artist: http://on.gagosian.com/4lzd0i9

Georg Baselitz (born 23 January 1938) is a German painter, sculptor and graphic artist. In the 1960s he became well known for his figurative, expressive paintings. In 1969 he began painting his subjects upside down in an effort to overcome the representational, content-driven character of his earlier work and stress the artifice of painting. Drawing from myriad influences, including art of Soviet era illustration art, the Mannerist period and African sculptures, he developed his own, distinct artistic language.