Friday’s Famous Artist is …… Egypt

I was wondering through my notes on who to pick for Friday’s Famous Artist and It occurred to me perhaps going forward is as good as going back.  So I chose Egypt.  It’s art is a fixed mythology in most people’s lives.  So incredible is it’s reach into our conscious mind, I doubt I could find a person who doesn’t know it.   That says a lot. 

 

From reading about the previous Famous Artists (Kandinsky, Picasso, De Kooning) I can also say that Egypt’s art has also had an impact on those artists as well.  Many have studied their mythology and symbolism. 

Egypt’s art and heritage was as close to me as the the large coffee table book my mother had of Egypt.  It mesmerized me.  All through my childhood I also knew of Egypt because our local museum had a really nice section dedicated to it with artifacts and renditions of temples; one of which was commissioned by my great grandfather and mother in the early 1900’s.  It’s still there to this day.  

I also had the opportunity to travel to Chicago and see the Tutankhamen exhibit there.  That is where I saw the incredible funeral mask pictured above.  It is breath taking.

The Pigments used to paint these incredible fresco’s are made of crushed bone, chalk, charcoal, lapis lazuli, malachite, vegtables and plant material.  Before heading off to make them yourself be aware that many of the pigments they used were highly toxic and contained cadium (orange), sulpher (yellow), oxides of copper (green) naturally oxidized iron and red ocher(red), chalk and gypsum(white), soot, burnt animal bones(black).

Interestingly enough, you will notice as you view Egyptian art that there exists a uniformity to it throughout it’s 5000 plus year history.  That was done on purpose.  Most figures are painted with the torso facing forward and the face sideways with both feet on the ground.  Also Gods and pharaohs are painted much larger then a slave or subject to represent their importance in society. 

And the final moment or the first is this picture of the pyramids, enough inspiration perhaps for 5000 years plus of history. 

The Power of Kitty

I wake up in the morning and scramble to the coffee pot.  The only hindrance to a direct b-line is my kitten, Gabriel.  He’s not a hindrance really but if I’m not careful I will trip over him and he doesn’t like that so much.

So I get to the coffee pot with a kitten on my leg and a loud MEOW.  Feed ME NOW.  Ok, the coffee waits, Gabriel gets some food, happy Kitten = happy studio.  The Day Begins.   HURRAY!  meow meow meow.  

Friday’s Famous Artist is Ben Eine and Ed Rusha

Ahh the famous trade between president Obama and Britains Prime Minister Cameron….begins here.  First British Prime Minister Cameron gives Obama a painting by a well known Pop Artist Ben Eine and a while later President Obama returns the favor by gifting another Pop Art work by Ed Rusha.   Who do you like better?

 

Ben Eine – Graffiti Artist

 

An Interview with Ben Eine http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jun/27/streetart

 

Or … Ed Rusha pop artist

 

An Interview with Ed Ruscha

http://www.lacma.org/art/BehindTheScenes14.aspx From the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts, Los Angeles, CA  90036

 

A little different then abstract art but no less important.  They both follow the post modern movement of Art. 

News From the Couch with coffee….

I’ve tweeted, linked and blogged and it’s not even 9am yet.  This is the moment when I realize it’s time to reflect a little about the weeks events.

I just finished a show outside of San Antonio that was Hot, Dusty and I was set up accross from a guy selling Alligators on a stick.  Not the best place for my art I am thinking then behold Sunday comes and a whole crowd of wonderful people emerge.

Never say never.  That’s the news from the Couch, how’s your day going?

Friday’s Famous Artist is Kandinsky

 

Wassily Kandinsky (Dec 1866 – Dec 1944) was a Russian painter and is credited with painting the first modern abstract works.

“In Kandinsky’s work, some characteristics are obvious while certain touches are more discrete and veiled; that is to say they reveal themselves only progressively to those who make the effort to deepen their connection with his work. He intended his forms, which he subtly harmonized and placed, to resonate with the observer's own soul.”

That is such a poignant statement to me.  I have been mesmerized by Kandinsky’s works from the age of 12 and my first visit to the Art Museum in which hung 2 of his works.  At that time I did not know who it was that offered such a unique view of the struggle between color, shape and definition.

That struggle I later found was with purpose.  Long after I had started my own journey with paint and canvas and found myself working with many of the same ideas and concepts, I chanced upon an article about Kandinsky and was stunned to hear words put to thoughts and emotions I myself have had.

I find expressing with words what I am doing on the canvas far more difficult.  For me the minute I pick up my paint brush I am in a totally in a different world.  Putting words to the motions and interaction that occurs with my work has been far more difficult.

Kandinsky settled in Munich in 1886 and studied first in the private school of Anton Ažbe and then at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He went back to Moscow in 1914, after World War I started. He was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow and returned to Germany in 1921. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, and became a French citizen in 1939. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.

  

It is amazing to me how circumstances at the time of his life greatly shaped his work and his reasoning.   Kandinsky was deeply spiritual and studied symbols.  He was also deeply moved by the biblical implications of the apocalypse.  Many of his pieces were an attempt to translate the difficult metaphorical map that the Bible laid down. 

Kandinsky is credited with providing  a Rosetta stone on which the meaning of these mysterious figures is inscribed.  He left a legacy and a primer of abstract art. 

New Work ….. A View From The Couch

100 Hearts Series.  This work measures 14 x 17 and costs $400.00.  Part of the proceeds from this series are donated to a charitable cause every year.   Please contact me at agapistudios@hotmail.com to purchase.  All work is shipped unframed and is done on 100lb archival paper.   Thanks!

Friday’s Famous Artist … Picasso

“Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”
— Pablo Picasso ^[32]
Famous Picasso,  studied and painted since his early teens.  Only this commitment could net the unbelievable achievement that comes from such a span of  time , October 1881 – April 1973.    From his Blue Period to the Rose Period to the African influences then to Cubism, Classicism, Surrealism, and more.
I was exposed to Picasso’s work at the Tate Gallery in London.  The curator there in fact owned one of his works and taught several classes.  Picasso was one of his absolute favorite artists and I spent many months studying the directions of his life. 
Not mentioned but very important is Picasso’s many relationship with the artists he influenced and movements such as “DaDa” art with the likes of Georges Braque. 
Picasso, like many artists of that time created commissioned sculptures …

He was also well know for his many relationships, marriages, break ups, and was strongly influenced by the women in his life … who it appears may have shaped the many directions of his art and career.
Picasso is timelessly timely and to this day his influence is felt.  

The Widget Brain Meets the Art Brain

Ok so here I am at my desk staring at the maze of statistics for my blog.   My heart rate is going up and I feel this incredible urge to distract myself as if leaving the computer will somehow make all the information appear.

Imbedding codes is as far as I am concerned a way of layering paint on the canvas which takes years and years of practice.   NO

Imbedded codes are the objects you need to place in your objects to make other objects work.  YES 

Right.  Brain.  Left. Color.  Right.  Correct.  Left.  A Little Darker.  No you need to create your tags and then put them in a cloud. 

K   Done … Thanks.  Do I pass?

Agapi Studios: News From The Couch: Deep Into Summer

Agapi Studios: News From The Couch: Deep Into Summer: " In this painting called “Bursts of Summer” I found myself one again struggling with the ambiance of messy perfection. I can hear ..."

News From The Couch: Deep Into Summer

 

In this painting called “Bursts of Summer”  I found myself one again struggling with the ambiance of messy perfection.  I can hear my teacher saying to me … clean up your lines … kind of like your mom saying clean up your room.  The need to keep things extremely tight often pushes me right outside of the box. 

It isn’t that I resist a “perfect” line, it’s just that often nothing around me in nature really speaks to that.  It all seems so organized but not acutely perfect. 

I drag branches from a tree that got blown in the wind last night and watch as the green green leaves start their journey of decay.    I enjoy the texture and random similarity of leaves and the timeless knots in the branches. 

Time for some more coffee.    That’s the news from the Couch this morning.  Hope your doing well. 

 

“Bursts of Summer” is 14 x 17  and costs $400.00.  You can contact agapistudios@hotmail.com to purchase.  All work is sold unframed and is done on 300lb archival paper.

Famous Abstract ARtists ……

 

Willem De Kooning (1904-1997) a Dutch American ARtist.  Here he is immortalized for all time.  Another Abstract artist who believed that he was an “individualist” as opposed to abstractionist .   He was a hard drinking man who had notorious escapades with woman.  The hallmark of de Kooning's style was an emphasis on complex figure ground ambiguity. Background figures would overlap other figures causing them to appear in the foreground, which in turn might be overlapped by dripping lines of paint thus positioning the area into the background. 

“The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.”   De Kooning

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Hot Summers

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It’s Hot/Hot Summer’s series measures 22 x 30 and costs $1200.00.  Please contact agapistudios@hotmail.com to purchase.  All work is shipped unframed and is done on 300lb archival paper.  Thanks.