The Art Cure: Artist: Matthew Rose (55)

The Art Cure: Artist: Matthew Rose (55): "Contributing artist, Paris France 'Me You' 14 and 3/4 by 18 and 3/4 inches (378mm x 478mm) Handpulled three color silkscreen print dated and signed..."

Obama: Avant Garde Video

Weekly Address: Jobs Creation from White House Weekly Address on Vimeo.

From ART FAG CITY via THE ONION.

Shakespeare & Company

Joanna Walsh, UK-based artist, has been working feverishly for Paris institution Shakespeare & Company, producing posters, murals, inserts and even bags for the famed destination.

Check out Joanna's site, and see more of these wonderful pieces.

Artist Auctioning Off His Control Over His 7-Year Artistic Output on eBay

New York-based artist William Brovelli is selling control over his artistic output for 7 years, in an conceptual piece entitled "Seven Year Itch."  The project begins with an auction bid on his production on eBay.

The artist follows others who have used eBay to stir the art world pot a bit, generate buzz and and perhaps find themselves as endentured servants of the Art Review Power 100 for a period of ... years!  Christophe Büchel famously auctioned off his place at Manifesta several years ago.  Artist Sal Randolf bought the placement and created the Free Manifesta.

Brovelli writes: "This is an interactive piece titled: 'Seven Year Itch' in which I am offering the collector the right to suspend my creative output for a period of 7 years. This act of relinquishing control to the purchaser creates a scenario in which the collector becomes a primary figure in the forming of the history of the piece… as well as letting me off the hook for a while."  

William Brovelli participated in the global project, A Book About Death.  Click here to see his piece.

Bidding on eBay starts at: $1000.

Artist Website: http://www.williambrovelli.com/

JR: Big Photos, 2011 TED Prize Winner

JR is a 27-year old photographer/grafitti artist, or graffeur as he calls it, and his modus operandi is to photograph locals and then print the images large and plaster them just about everywhere, on steps, trains, houses, walls as a kind of homage to the people he admires. His efforts are global and his works appear in cities (and on walls) around the world – from Nairobi to Paris to Cambodia to Palestine. We, at SFW, find this work absolutely gorgeous, amazing and well, just take a look for yourselves...

From the TED.com website: JR exhibits his photographs in the biggest art gallery on the planet. His work is presented freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not museum visitors. His work mixes Art and Action; it talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit.

JR’s career as a photographer began when he found a camera in the Paris subway. In his first major project, in 2001 and 2002, JR toured and photographed street art around Europe, tracking the people who communicate their messages to the world on walls. His first large-format postings began appearing on walls in Paris and Rome in 2003. His first book, Carnet de rue par JR, about street artists, appeared in 2005.

In 2006, he launched “Portrait of a Generation,” huge-format portraits of suburban “thugs” from Paris’ notorious banlieues, posted on the walls of the bourgeois districts of Paris. This illegal project became official when Paris City Hall wrapped its own building in JR’s photos.

In 2007, with business partner Marco, he did “Face 2 Face,” which some consider the biggest illegal photo exhibition ever. JR and a grassroots team of community members posted huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities, and on the both sides of the security fence/separation barrier.

He embarked on a long international trip in 2008 for his exhibition “Women Are Heroes,” a project underlining the dignity of women who are the target of conflict. In 2010, the film Women Are Heroes was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and received a long-standing ovation.

JR is currently working on two projects: “Wrinkles of the City,” which questions the memory of a city and its inhabitants; and Unframed, which reinterprets famous photographs and photographers by taking photos from museum archives and exposing them to the world as huge-format photos on the walls of cities. It asks the question: What is the art piece then? The original photo, the photo “unframed” by JR or both?

JR creates pervasive art that spreads uninvited on buildings of Parisian slums, on walls in the Middle East, on broken bridges in Africa or in favelas in Brazil. People in the exhibit communities, those who often live with the bare minimum, discover something absolutely unnecessary but utterly wonderful. And they don’t just see it, they make it. Elderly women become models for a day; kids turn into artists for a week. In this art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.

After these local exhibitions, two important things happen: The images are transported to London, New York, Berlin or Amsterdam where new people interpret them in the light of their own personal experience. And ongoing art and craft workshops in the originating community continue the work of celebrating everyone who lives there.

As he is anonymous and doesn’t explain his huge full-frame portraits of people making faces, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passer-by/ interpreter.
This is what JR is working on. Raising questions…

VISIT THE JR WEBSITE.

TED WEBSITE WITH MORE OF JR'S WORK.

Vingt Paris : Apartments In Paris

Susie Hollands, founder and director of Vignt Paris, has been helping people find apartments in Paris for nearly a dozen years. Vignt recently relaunched her company website with an opening slide show that shows a ton of wonderful Paris images. Need an apartment in Paris for a week, a month, a year? Check it out: http://vingtparis.com/

Photo: The Rue Daguerre, 75014, Paris.

The Art Blog Dot Org

Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof founded the Zero .1% for Art Commission to bridge the gap between ordinary people and art. theartblog, established in 2003, is an outgrowth of that mission.

Roberta Fallon makes art, writes about art and thinks about art probably too much. She’s proud to claim part ownership of THEartblog with her dear friend and long-time collaborator, Libby. As a child in Milwaukee Roberta put on puppet shows in the garage and sold popcorn for a penny and realized she loved an audience but had no head for business. Married to Steve and with three children, Oona, Max and Stella, Roberta has written about art for Philadelphia Weekly, Artnet, Art Review, Art on Paper, Philadelphia Inquirer and Art and Auction, and has taught and been a visiting critic at Tyler School of Art, St. Joseph’s University and Cranbrook Academy of Art. Read posts by Roberta»

 

Libby Rosof I credit my husband Murray and kids Alex and Minna for making me take popular culture seriously. As for the art, I gave it up in the 10th grade in Brooklyn. I wouldn’t have spent so many years on art or spent all my time writing artblog if not for my good buddy and long-time collaborator Roberta–it’s all her fault. I founded the award-winning publication the Penn Current at the University of Pennsylvania, and I’ve taught in public school, the Journalism Department at Temple University and at Tyler School of Art. Enough already! Read posts by Libby»

 

Libby and Roberta the Editors, aka liberta, aka Libby Rosof and Roberta Fallon started this blog in 2003. Between the two of them they have 3,891 posts to their names as of july 26, 2010. More coming. Read posts by Liberta»

David Shrigley At Frieze London: I'm Dead

Frieze London is a veritable shopping mall this weekend with Ten Embarassed Men wandering the fair in white shirts looking, well embarrased. Perhaps about the shortage of women artists?  Or maybe because they're just men and it's their nature. Performance is by Annika Stroom.

David Shrigley, the irreverent UK scribbler is there making free temporary tattoos for visitors.  Don't wash them off.  Here's his doggy, who by the way, is dead. 

If you're in London Town and you get a chance, there's also Scared But Fresh at The Orange Dot Gallery nearby on 54 Tavistock Place (Tube Russell Square).

Photo: Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.

The Art Collectors: Marty Gordon

Marty Gordon loves comics.  He also likes rewriting them. He is one of 40 artists featured in Masters: Collage (Lark Books, 2010). Irreverent, funny, sardonic, Gordon pulls aces out of his deck non-stop.

Image: The Art Collectors, 6" x 8," collage on wood panel.  See more of Marty Gordon's work here.

Exit Through The Cloak Room: British Artist Mike Ballard On Stealing, Art & Redemption

It’s hard to be a bad boy in the art world these days, but Mike Ballard is trying. His installation “Whose Coat Is That Jacket You’re Wearing?” fulfills a contemporary art world wet dream ... Just in time for the Frieze Art Fair in London.  Exit Through The Cloak Room!

Read the whole article from theartblog.org.

Art Grant

Alot of people think this is me!

Fluxmuseum ABAD Opens in Texas

A BOOK ABOUT DEATH THE EXHIBITION ARCHIVE: Fluxmuseum ABAD Opens in Texas.

Ricardo Bloch: Ali Baba's Cave at Galerie Thalie Paris Opening October 21 at 6 PM

Ricardo Bloch launches a new exhibition of his photographs in Paris at Galerie Thalie featuring a sequence of photographs produced in a theater prop store room.  Think: Ali Baba from 1001 Nights.

Opening:  Thursday, October 21, 6-9 pm, Galerie Thalie, 26, rue Robert Fleury, 75015,  (06) 81 45 33 83

Preview here.

See more of Ricardo Bloch's work: http://ricardobloch.com/

Make Your Own Artist Stamps: Michel Hosszù

Michel Hosszù, the French artist known the world over for his stamps – Marquis de Sade, Coluche, Famous People, Warhol, Van Gogh's Self Portraits and thousands of other editions for individual artists – will print your own designs as stamps. Individual stamps, small sheets and large format sheets permit artists to create limited editions of varying kinds.

Michel Hosszù has long practiced mail art with a focus on stamps. Several works from the 1980s feature the red Marianne French postage stamp covering entire canvases. The artist says: "I used to work in a factory where my job was to get rid of mailed envelopes, so I peeled off thousands of these canceled stamps." Other strange and wonderful objects have sailed in and out of his Bastille studio over the decades.

Michel has also helped me produce my limited edition, Rubens Rounding Third, an ode to baseball, art and the sexy gaze of an amorous public and player.

Artists, photographers, designers and others have the opportunity now to produce their own stamps using whatever image and text they desire. Formats vary, so it's best to take a good look at how to organize an edition using these design grids.

Cost is relatively minor compared to the impact of these great little works of art. My guess is they'll also make interesting gifts for people who want to immortalize a friend or a pet or even, hey! an idea on a stamp.

Contact: Michel Hosszù in Paris.

EYEHOLE ART

Eyehole Paintings with Adam West from Adam West

Landscape in America: Howard Rose

Reproducing the landscape on canvas, whether an abandoned beach or a busy city street, a sun-bleached roof or a snow-caked tree, has been the obsessed province of painters since forever.

The great outdoors in America became a high art with the works of the Hudson Valley River painters fueled perhaps by the writings of Henry David Thoreau. In France, Cezanne and Monet, went outdoors and their un-peopled designs of nature crushed in pigment magnified through the prism of the eye changed both the way we see the world and structure of painting itself. In the process of describing the world in paint, the medium itself became a subject: A swath of sunlight rendered in a longish patch of cadmium yellow modified with titanium white.  You could almost eat it. Thick and lustrous, paint depicted the natural world, and the painting itself then became an object for the man-made one.

Howard Rose does just that in his massive catalog of landscape works. Producing larger format and miniature canvases, the Long Island-based artist (and teacher), has mapped out the glowing corners of the soft and worn world around him.

In the last 100 years most every artist beginning at a very young age has painted the tree they first climbed, the house they grew up in, or the horizon that met them as they pondered the damn meaning of it all. The real world – the familiar – is the basis for art: Broken down barns, their colors wilting in the summer sun or brooks eking out a dribble of water under a blanket of snow, or waves transparent and curling, cresting on an empty beach. The impulse to immortalize a flowering meadow, a patch in the woods, a range of mountains, shadows on a footpath is innately human, it's about mixing memory with desire, creating elaborate traces of what we've seen, and what we see.     

Howard Rose is a hunter-gatherer of these five-senses moments. Using photography as a framing device, or sometimes working directly in nature, the artist restates the world in compelling compositions that are solid but dreamy, sensual and sure. 

It's fair to say that Howard Rose is thrilled by light. And he's mastered the various techniques to give light palpable reality on canvas without tilting over into the photo-realist canon. His transparent foam cresting waves breaking on an Atlantic shore are perfect haikus of action: A poetic fusion of Nature's various verbs. Dune grasses, sun dappled paths, clapboard houses wrapped in the blueish haze of afternoon snow are all fascinations for this artist, and each foray into these subjects yields compositions are both examine the texture of the world and ultimately the mind that seizes it.

A graduate of The School of Visual Arts, in New York City, and post-graduate studies at C.W. Post college, Howard Rose also studied  at the New School of Social Research for Photography.

Howard Rose runs a painting workshop and has written extensively on teaching and technique for publications such as Artist's Magazine and American Artist Magazine, and he leads oil painting workshops throughout the Northeast, including The Hudson Valley Workshops, The Art Barge in East Hampton, and Southampton Oil Painting Workshop as well as The Huntington Art League and C.W. Post College.

Photo: Howard Rose and excited guest at his recent one-man show at Chrysalis Gallery in Southampton, New York.

Visit one of his galleries: Les Bons Amis Locust Valley, NY. Or click here to see more of Howard Rose's work.  His work shop is here.

Your Art Here: Spelling With Scissors

I've entered my full on, wall to wall to wall from ceiling to floor installation work Spelling With Scissors in the H&M contest, Your Art Here.  Take a look, vote (click on the stars), and survey the other artist proposals.  If you're an artist, submit your own entry.  It's free.

MATTHEW ROSE Spelling With Scissors: Your Art Here (Vote).

Roy Lichtenstein: Autumn in New York

“Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968” is on view through Jan. 2 at the Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street;(212) 685-0008, themorgan.org.

“Roy Lichtenstein: Mostly Men”  through Oct. 30 at the Leo Castelli Gallery, 18 East 77th Street, Manhattan;(212) 249-4470.

“Roy Lichtenstein Reflected” through Oct. 30 at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 534 West 26th Street, Chelsea; (212) 744-7400.

NYT Article by Roberta Smith.

Image above: “Indian” (1951), at the Leo Castelli Gallery.

Credit: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, Leo Castelli Gallery

Philippe Bonan: Portraits Of The Artists

Prior to the invention of photography we barely knew what artists looked like beyond their enhanced self-portraits, if indeed they painted them. Nowadays, everyone is an artist, and everyone has a camera, so there's no lack of documentaries on the artist at play, the artist at work, the artist drunk, the artist being kissed by the celebrity. In the 21st century, there is little doubt the artist is a celebrity, too, and portraits are much in demand (just ask Timothy Greenfield-Sanders).  The straight up portrait, the official gaze of the artist without props, attempts to read the mind of the creative, focusing on the eyes, the skin texture, this fantastic being of our time.

Philippe Bonan, a French photographer with a voracious appetite for capturing artists on film, has a quest: Produce a massive catalog of living artists wherever they are. But he wants to keep it all very simple, but elegant, and above all real.

During the opening of Anthony Caro's exhibition at Danielle Templon in Paris, Philippe Bonan was visibly angling in the crowd around the sculptor to get off a shot. The French photographer has made a profession out of portraying artists in black and white or color, in their studios or, sometimes in front of their installations. Bonan's catalog of artists is impressive – Keith Haring, Ben Vautier, Daniel Buren, Christian Boltanski, George Baselitz, Arman, Fernando Botero, Valerio Adami – numbering in the hundreds.

Bonan's portraits generally lack props (Arman poses with a parrot in one, however) and steer clear of guise. These portraits are simple and real: only the artist in his or her environment, standing, sitting, aware of the lens but not disturbed by it. Some do, however, act out a mini-fantasy – Ben Vautier (above) scowling with his text work: Je veux rester le seul. (I want to be the only one). Or Icelandic artist Katrin Fridriks in paint-splattered art uniform curled up in her studio. Wearing. Bunny. Ears.

There is virtue in Bonan's great project: Like Vasari, the 16th century Italian painter generally credited with launching art historical writing with his literary sketches of the lives of his contemporaries, seeing artists as they live and work – "as they are" – not only dispels myths but permits those interested in understanding our time to fully grasp the fleeting presence artists have, even while their work carries on. Bonan's passion is real, and his project is, as artist after artist is added to his extensive black and white catalog, valuable both historically and visually.

A 1988 portrait of painter Hans Hartung, shows the artist tired, perhaps even beleaguered, full on in a close up; Hartung's thick black glasses obscure his face; he is revealed, if only for a moment.  Jim Dine is portrayed looking into a mirror; Donald Baechler in his studio in front of an unfinished, giant collage; Fabrice Hybert in sporty shorts and scarf leaning on the door jam to his kitchen. There is little heroicism about any of these images – thankfully – and that fact leads to their great interest.

Fascinating indeed is the ordinary photograph of the young Jasper Johns in his downtown New York loft in the early 1950s, fresh-faced and eager to take on the art world. Or a pale Andy Warhol walking along Madison Avenue on his way to work.  Pollack, bearded, pasty and fat, circa 1955 staring off into an uncertain future, headed for disaster is prescient because the photograph is simply him, the artist cast in the net of his own life.  A young Keith Haring (above), thoughtful, quiet having enjoyed a wild success, but whose days are numbered. Bonan camps around the same fire, and you can see in the eyes his artist subjects return to him, that they too, know they are but just a flicker in the landscape. But the warmth generated from Bonan's activity is genuine.  Take a look: Philippe Bonan.

Photograph of Philippe Bonan by © Didier Gicquel. All other images © Philippe Bonan.

Portrait: Thomas Fougeirol

I recently had the pleasure to visit painter Thomas Rougeirol's studio in Ivry-sur-Seine to talk about some of his new large canvases, his influences and processes.

This studio, one of two the French-born painter maintains (the other is in Bushwick, Brooklyn) is immense by any standard. But there is no sign of anyone else working here. His is a one-person operation, and by a quick calculation, Fougeirol works non-stop, as there are literally thousands of large and medium-sized canvases filling this giant factory space. 

Fougeirol works with positives and negatives, largely in black and white, and manipulates the paint-drenched canvas "brush" to map out the areas he's interested in accenting.  A serious collection of plastic shower curtains allows him to create all-over patterns that are by turn ghostly and photograph.

Thomas paints with his body, that is, he presses oil paint-soaked canvases and other items against his stretched canvases, and traces out a pattern line by line to produce a kind of monotype.  It is hard to produce anything larger than the size of his own body as he works on the floor, but some of his canvases measure 2.5 x 3.5 meters and "just get out the door," he says.

What's key for the 45-year old artist is that he isn't using machines to produce his works, say, in the manner Christopher Wool has recently by creating a mosaic out of an abstract painted pattern, refashioning them in Photoshop and producing a silkscreen. "No, I am the machine," Fougeirol insists.  In a way that Klein used bodies to produce magic works.  Or in a way that skid marks are made on a street: With the application (hard and fast) of the car brakes.  Other works are piled up spiraling custards of black or silver oil paint; several portray chandeliers, but almost all intimate death in an elegant, lush, near monumental fashion.

I mention two great German artists – Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter – and Fougeirol nods, familiar not only with their techniques, mystery and iconography but also with the deeper sense of their investigations – and his:  "The work here focuses on death, its immutability and its evasiveness." Thomas toys with a human skull he uses as a studio prop for paintings.  I look around: There is an enormous energy in these works, a kind of life-affirming activity, and a glowing light emanating from these canvases.

The imagery shifts quickly and easily from giant skulls, beds and armoires to a dark tangle of old branches in black. Some canvases are painted in hot flourescent pink, yellow and silver, and are printed over in a black grid. There is a wild thrill attached to all of these canvases, as if you're looking into the artist's open heart.  

See studio images here.  Gallery website: Praz-Delavallade.