David Hockney, alive and well at 87 years old (2024) once said; “We always see with memory”. And this is true. The art or the seeing with memory are loosely associated techniques used to organize memory impressions, and assist in the combination and ‘invention’ of ideas in art. David Hockney is a master of expressing this in his work. His art represents moments in time that are captured in large scale.

Hockney is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer. He attended the Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. Hockney is an important contributor to the Pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.

Hockney is an active arts advocate and his work is widely recognized, awarded and in fact he was even offered a knighthood (which he declined). In 2012, Queen Elizabeth II appointed him to the Order of Merit, an honor restricted to 24 members at any one time for their contributions to the arts and sciences. He is also highly praised for adopting technology, with artworks created on the iPad. Admittedly he didn’t take to the Apple device quickly. “It took me awhile to realize it’s quite a serious tool you can use,” he said.

Hockney Swimming Pool Paintings

In the 1960’w when Hockney emigrated to the United States he was known for his ‘swimming pool’ paintings and his most famous is A Bigger Splash, named after one of Hockney’s most famous swimming pool paintings from 1967.

This painting above, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) is a large acrylic-on-canvas measuring 7 ft x 10 ft and was completed in May 1972. In 2018, his painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) sold for $90.3 million, then the highest sale ever for a living artist.

David Hockney Trees and Landscapes

From pools to landscapes, Hockney painted a series of landscape paintings to express his love for the natural environment. Hockney composed his landscape paintings in acrylics over multiple canvases.

Hockney’s work continues to amaze, even into his senior years. His style evolves into new places as he ages and his work is not only an inspiration for the arts but for graphic design too.

As you get older, it gets a bit harder to keep the spontaneity in you, but I work at it.
-David Hockney

When I’m not in the studio, I feel my age, he says. But when I am in my studio, I feel 30.
-David Hockney

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In the 1940’s working as a graphic designer she was ‘discovered’ for her visual talent by Photographer Richard Avedon and encouraged towards a career in photography.

Her sophisticated style evolved and was bold, moody and elegantly expressed in fashion photography in Harper’s Bazzaar from the late 1940s to the early 1960s’. Her romantic images revolutionized fashion photography and her talent was highly sought after. Vanity Fair magazine singled her out as one of photography’s “grand masters”. ‘Full of mystery, sensuality, and expressionistic glamour, Bassman’s dramatic black and white photographs capture secret moments and dream memories’.

Bassman told The New York Times in a 1997 interview that she wanted to “take the hardness out of the photography” in order to make it less literal, which she accomplished using darkroom techniques such as bleaching, dodging and burning, and selective focus.

Over the ensuing 25 years, Bassman shot a wide variety of consumer ads–“everything that could be photographed,” she told The New York Times–but especially glamorous models for lingerie advertising. She frequently shot fashion spreads for Harper’s Bazaar as well.

In the 1970s, Bassman was discourage with the changing fashion industry and high-maintenance models, “I got sick of them,” she told The Times in 2009. “They were becoming superstars. They were not my kind of models. They were dictating rather than taking direction.” Disappointed with the profession she abruptly closed her studio, abandoned photography – destroyed her commercial negatives and dumped the editorial ones in binliners in a nook of her home. Instead, for private satisfaction, she photographed semi-abstracts.

For years her famous dramatic images stayed dormant. And then in the early 1990’s a friend of hers discovered her long lost negatives and encouraged her to pursue photography again. With the passage of years she was ready to redefine her photography work.

At 87 years old her interest in darkroom techniques transferred into a fascination for Photoshop and she embraced the digital and began creating interesting effects and variations of images she had captured years ago. Her reinterpretations, as she called them, found a new generation of admirers.

These reinterpretations were so admired that she returned to photograph the Paris collections for the New York Times magazine in 1996, and worked for Vogue until 2004. She had exhibitions across Europe and in the US. Books of her “painting with light” were published in 1997 (Lillian Bassman), 2009 (Lillian Bassman: Women) and this year (Lillian Bassman: Lingerie).

Lillian Bassman who passed away last year in February at age 94, is truly an inspirational artist. In an era where women were not recognized in the arts and design, she was. And as an 87-year old woman she embraced digital, learned technical skills and revitalized her work in a new way.

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For more than fifty years he has set a standard for American art. Like so many of the famous artists I’ve studied, many of them had their roots of art take hold in childhood. From the age of five Jasper knew he wanted to be an artist.

His work depicts commonplace emblems such as flags, targets, maps, and numbers, and through his genius manipulation to the canvas’ surface texture, he raises the images to iconic status. Constantly challenging the technical possibilities of printmaking, painting and sculpture,  Johns laid the groundwork for a wide range of experimental artists.

Jasper is one of the most significant figures in the history of postwar art. His work from 1955 to 1965 was pivotal, and he laid the groundwork for both Pop Art and Minimalism.

Since the 1980s, Johns produces paintings at four to five a year, sometimes not at all during a year. His large scale paintings are much favored by collectors and due to their rarity, it is known that Johns’ works are extremely difficult to acquire.

Today, as his prints and paintings set record prices at auction, the meanings of his paintings, his imagery, and his changing style continue to be subjects of controversy.

Media Highlights

Johns had painted his first American flag in 1954, and it is the image with which the artist is most often associated. His White Flag (1955) hangs in the Metropolitan; Three Flags (1958) is in the Whitneys permanent collection. A 1973 piece, Two Flags, sold for $12.1 million in 1989 — the second highest auction price ever achieved by the artist.

The National Gallery of Art acquired about 1,700 of Johns’ proofs in 2007. This made the Gallery home to the largest number of Johns’ works held by a single institution.

Sources:
christies.com/lotfinder/prints-multiples/jasper-johns-flags-i-5313639-details.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Johns

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Louise Bourgeois was a renowned French-born American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, abstract sculptures, drawings and prints. She was in her 80’s when she created her iconic giant spider as part of the Maman series.

She was nicknamed the Spiderwoman and in 2012 her sculpture titled Maman, sold for $10.7 million, a new record price for the artist at auction, and the highest price paid for a work by a woman artist. Maman resembles a spider, is among the world’s largest, measuring over 30 ft high and over 33 ft wide, with a sac containing 26 marble eggs.

Why did Louise Bourgeois make the Spider sculpture?

“The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.”
— Louise Bourgeois

Though she holds a place in current art history with famous works such as Maman, it was only only late in a long career that she was seen as a profound and influential female artist. She fought hard for this and had a history of activism. During the 1970s, Bourgeois was a member of the Fight Censorship Group, a feminist anti-censorship collective founded by fellow artist Anita Steckel that defended the use of sexual imagery in artwork. Her sculptures were viewed as intimate and overtly sexual, and were created during the most controversial period of American art.

Early Years and Trauma

Bourgeois was born on 25 December 1911 and was the middle child of three born to parents Josephine Fauriaux and Louis Bourgeois. Her parents owned a gallery that dealt primarily in antique tapestries. A few years after her birth, her family moved out of Paris and set up a workshop for tapestry restoration below their apartment in Choisy-le-Roi, for which Bourgeois filled in the designs where they had become worn.

By 1924 her father, a tyrannical philanderer, was indulging in an extended affair with her English teacher and nanny. According to Bourgeois, her mother, Josephine, “an intelligent, patient and enduring, if not calculating, person,” was aware of her husband’s infidelity, but found it easier to turn a blind eye.

She was eleven when she witnessed her father’s betrayal of his wife and three children and this had a lasting effect on her. During this period, Bourgeois attended to her mother, who had succumbed to the Spanish Flu. This triangle of sexual infidelity and illness cast the young artist in the most inappropriate of roles—as voyeur, accomplice, and nurturer—the combination of which left her with life-long psychic scars.

This marked the beginning of her experience and pain with double standards related to gender and sexuality and this theme was expressed in much of her work. She recalls her father saying “I love you” repeatedly to her mother despite infidelity. She remarked, “He was the wolf, and she was the rational hare, forgiving and accepting him as he was.”

Bourgeois published a photo essay in Artforum magazine that revealed the impact of childhood trauma on her art.

“Everything I do,” she exclaimed, “was inspired by my early life.”

Her diaries, which she has kept assiduously since 1923, indicate the tensions between rage, fear of abandonment, and guilt that she has suffered since childhood. It is through her art, however, that she has been able to channel and release these tensions.

In the Business of Pain

“The subject of pain is the business I am in,” she said. “To give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering.” She added: “The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses.” Yet it was her gift for universalizing her interior life as a complex spectrum of sensations that made her art so affecting.

A Long Expressive Life

Bourgeois died of heart failure on 31 May 2010 at the age of 98. She had continued to create artwork until her death, her last pieces were finished the week before.

The New York Times said that her work “shared a set of repeated themes, centered on the human body and its need for nurture and protection in a frightening world.”

Her husband, Robert Goldwater, died in 1973. She was survived by two sons, Alain Bourgeois and Jean-Louis Bourgeois. Her third son, Michel, died in 1990

More on Bourgeois
wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Bourgeois

arttattler.com/archivebourgeois.html

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Painted when Lucian Freud was 72, The Benefits Supervisor Expresses Raw Vulnerability

In celebration of Freud’s birthday in May (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) let’s take a look at where the real talent was! Freud’s grandson Lucian Freud, the late British artist and figurative painter.  Freud got his first name “Lucian” from his mother in memory of the ancient writer Lucian of Samosata. His family moved to England in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism. From 1942 to 1943 he attended Goldsmiths College, London. He served at sea with the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War.

His early work was inspired by surrealism and his friend Francis Bacon,  however Lucian is known for his nudes of regular people and much of his career was spent in relative obscurity.  In the last quarter of his life, however, his audaciously explicit portraits would intrigue the art world and sell for millions.

Lucian talented in his own right observed people on a much different level than his grandfather. He seemed to capture the essence of a person with his rough brush strokes, while his grandfather connected on an impersonal intellectual level.

Keen Eye Captures Fleshy Rawness in Benefits Supervisor Sleeping

Lucian with his keen artist eye was able to capture and express the vulnerable humanity of regular people. He seems to capture an essence and intimacy that is somewhat disturbing. His painting “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” painted in 1995 (and sold in 2008 over 33 million dollars  – the world record for the highest price paid for a painting by a living artist at the time),  captures fleshy rawness and the discomfort of the sleeping woman, Sue Tilley.

Sue was an ongoing model for Lucian. She is quoted as saying in 2008:

“I’m not the ‘ideal woman’, I know I’m not. But who is? And he never made the skinny ones look any better. He picks out every single little detail.”

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping: “He made me look so horrible.”

The painting took months and the initial sitting had her posing, in great discomfort, prostrate on the studio floor – “and he made me look so horrible. I’m shaking now as I think of it”,  Sue said. Once “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping”,  got underway Freud bought the sofa for her to rest on. “It was lovely and comfy, and I just lay on it, really, for nine months. Even when Lucian worked on the background he insisted his model was present.

During the work, painted in daylight, Tilley showed up at Freud’s studio early to catch the first light. “I might arrive at 7am. Then we’d sit in the kitchen, have a little chat, have breakfast, a snack. The first session would be quite long, when we were both quite fresh and there weren’t many interruptions.”

“Sometimes he’d take me out for lunch, which I liked, and we’d work again in the afternoon. It was quite exhausting, just lying there. I know it sounds silly, but it was.”

The world record for the highest price paid for a painting by a living artist at the time.

In 1995 the life-size painting fetched $33.6 million during bidding at Christie’s auction house in New York.

Lucian died on July 20, 2011 and his paintings are among the most sought after.

Sources:
www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/apr/12/art

 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Freud

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To the critics Christo said “I am an artist, and I have to have courage …”

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were born on the same date June 13th, Christo in Gabrovo, Bulgaria (June 13, 1935), and Jeanne-Claude (his wife) in Morocco (June 13, 1935 – November 18, 2009).

They first met in Paris in October 1958. Their works were credited to just “Christo” until 1994, when the outdoor works and large indoor installations were retroactively credited to “Christo and Jeanne-Claude”.  Jeanne-Claude who passed away on November 18, 2009 said she became an artist out of love for Christo (if he’d been a dentist, she said she’d have become a dentist).

Their work, which has been controversial because of the large scale, has been examined for a deeper physiological meanings. “What does the artist feel”, “Do they have issues”, “Why are they wrapping so many things” and “their destroying the environment”… however, the purpose of their art they contend, is simply to create beauty and joy and new ways of seeing familiar landscapes. For the environmental issues they spend a lot of time in research and then materials to ensure their art pieces do not disrupt the environment.

To the critics Christo said “I am an artist, and I have to have courage … Do you know that I don’t have any artworks that exist? They all go away when they’re finished. Only the preparatory drawings, and collages are left, giving my works an almost legendary character. I think it takes much greater courage to create things to be gone than to create things that will remain.”

The projects “are absolutely irrational with no justification to exist. Nobody needs a running fence or surrounded islands. They are created because Jeanne-Claude and I have this unstoppable urge to create.”

The large-scale projects are 100% financed by the artists as well. They make money through the sale of preliminary drawings, studies, and models.

One of his last projects ‘The Floating Piers’ was a 16-day outdoor installation in Italy and it gave visitors the chance to ‘walk on water’.

I’m Not a Stranger to Christo’s Work

My first encounter with the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude was when I lived in Southern California driving up the Grapevine and then out of nowhere was a forest of yellow umbrellas; random, in groups, standing in long curved lines in the dry landscape. Pops of yellow scattered like California poppies was beautiful in a peculiar way and left a lasting impression on me.

Contrasting the dry landscape with the lush, on the other side of the world in Ibaraki, Japan, 1,340 blue umbrellas also were opened against that region’s landscape, making the project international in scope.

The years-long project would come to be known as “The Umbrellas, Japan-USA 1984-1991.

The experience of the unexpected of Christo and Jeanne-Claude work leaves a lasting impression. And since then I’ve been a fan of his work.

Photos in this Blog are in conjunction with the copyright: http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/press

Photos:
Wolfgang Volz

Facts from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christo_and_Jeanne-Claude

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Happy Birthday Dale Chihuly the famous glass artist from Tacoma, Washington. Born September 20th 1941, his works are considered unique to the field of blown glass. The technical difficulties of working with glass forms are considerable, yet Chihuly uses it as the primary medium for decorations, installations and environmental artwork.

From Interior Design to Glass Master

Before Chihuly became famous in this line of work, he had no interest, he was actually studying interior design. Through a series of opportunities and events he received a Master of Science degree in sculpture. From there we went on to receive a master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture. He was awarded a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant for his work in glass, as well as a Fulbright Fellowship. He traveled to Venice to work at the Venini factory on the island of Murano, where he first saw the team approach to blowing glass.

Blinded by Glass

In 1976, while Chihuly was in England, he was involved in a head-on car accident during which he flew through the windshield. His face was severely cut by glass and he was blinded in his left eye. After recovering, he continued to blow glass until he dislocated his right shoulder in a 1979 bodysurfing accident. No longer able to hold the glass blowing pipe, he hired others to do the work. Chihuly explained the change in a 2006 interview, saying “Once I stepped back, I liked the view,” and pointed out that it allowed him to see the work from more perspectives and enabled him to anticipate problems faster. Chihuly describes his role as “more choreographer than dancer, more supervisor than participant, more director than actor.”

Trials & Success

Chihuly has been very successful in his career along with his share of trials. Starting in his 40s, Chihuly has suffered from bipolar disorder. Chihuly said he understands the problem more than he used to. “I thought I couldn’t work well when I was down, but then I noticed the work could still be good,” he said. “The reverse is true, too.”

Regardless of trials, he has led the avant-garde in the development of glass as a fine art. His work is included in more than 200 museum collections worldwide. He has been the recipient of many awards, including twelve honorary doctorates and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Watch below from Dale Chihuly’s Persians Series

Source: Wikipedia

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Milton Glaser live a long and creative life, and died at the age of 91. He emerged as a prolific purveyor of visual culture in the 1960s. Glaser’s brand of graphic design distinctively captured the spirit of the psychedelic sixties. Bob Dylan, The Rolling stones, and The Beatles were all packaged in concert poster and vinyl records with Glaser’s groovy blend of comic book colors and clear-cut images. Glaser’s catalogue of designs certainly convey a Warholesque blending of abstract expressionism with everyday items and the icons of the time. Similar to Andy Warhol, Glaser redefined the Western conception of Popular Art that appealed to the media culture. Graphic design emerged as a standard of twentieth century art due to Glaser’s contribution to advertising popular culture. However, to exemplify the lingering influence of Glaser’s work within the frame of modern culture, his biography will be slightly explored.

Born in the late 1920s in New York City, Glaser graduated from the Cooper Union institute with a degree in graphic design and paved his way as an illustrator during the rise of television culture in the 1950s. Glaser co-founded Push Pin Studios with a group of his fellow Cooper Union graduates and experimentally changed the scope of both graphic design and visual art.

From Bob Dylan to I love New York

Essentially, Glaser sought to redefine the breadth of Modern Art during his early period. Glaser translated the burgeoning counterculture as his fame increased throughout the 1960s. Glaser’s technique of superimposing, or layering, smooth figures with a palette of dynamic colors was famously distinguished in his 1966 print of Bob Dylan. Referred by the Smithsonian as the ‘Sign of the Times,’ Glaser captures the enigmatic persona of Bob Dylan with the blush of psychedelic curls that contrasts his opaque outline. Glaser generated great success after his Dylan portrait was laminated on the cover of his greatest hits compilation, which sold more than six million copies. Glaser’s celebrity heightened as he was contracted to create logos such as the I Heart New York design.

Redefining the Elusive Boundaries of What Constitutes Art

Much in the same way Andy Warhol melded the conventions of high art with popular culture, Glaser expanded the possibilities for graphic designers to infiltrate the economics of the media. Glaser received the National Medal of Arts in 2009, which informs his legacy of pushing the envelope with redefining the elusive boundaries of what constitutes art. Essentially, the twentieth century Postmodern Art movement- which employs techniques such as juxtaposing high culture with low culture, minimal design elements, and collaging different art forms- owes a debt to Glaser for establishing the medium of graphic design within the sphere of Postmodernism.

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Vickrey’s work has an reminiscent feel of Winslow Homer with lonely figures and striking realism. His unnerving depiction of impending disaster and dread made him a leading figure in the magic realism schools. Magic Realism was developed as an art movement in the years after World War 1. Representational art, mixed with elements of fantasy was often typified by remarkable detail and sharp focus and taps into the emotional reservoirs within all of us.

Vickrey’s paintings cast an undeniable spell of mystery and capture the intimate emotion of figures in commonplace settings. It’s as if he intrudes gently into the private thoughts and fantasy life of his subjects. Light, shadow, color and composition intertwine to create a stillness and stark contrast that transcends ordinary.

Vickrey’s paintings are among the most intriguing and unique of all American Artists who specialized in realism and egg tempera.

In 1948, Robert Vickrey found a photograph of two nuns from the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. He was fascinated by the image and created many paintings of nuns in austere and often sinister surroundings. In Fear, Vickrey used egg tempera paint to create a detailed view of a barren landscape, in which a nun appears to be running in distress.

In the 1950’s and ’60’s Vickrey was a highly visible artist. He was also commissioned to paint dozens of portraits for the cover of Time, notably a portrait from life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the magazine’s Man of the Year issue in 1964. Vickrey created 78 covers for TIME magazine over the course of 11 years, from 1957 to 1968.

Today over 80 museum collections include his works in their permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Corcoran Gallery.

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If you have children you no doubt have heard of Maurice Sendak… One of his most popular books is “Where the Wild Things Are”!

Maurice Sendak was considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, whose works tore the picture book out of the ordinary, happy, safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and nightmarish recesses of the human psyche.

Sendak was born to Polish Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn New York on June 10, 1928. At an early age he was exposed to the reality of death and tragedy. His childhood, described as was a “terrible situation” was filled with grief and horror from the his extended family being killed during the Holocaust.

As a child Sendak was sickly with health problems and was confined to his bed where he spent time drawing. At the age of twelve he decided to become an illustrator after watching Walt Disney’s film Fantasia.

As he grew up — lower class, Jewish, gay — he felt permanently shunted to the margins of things. “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy,” he told The New York Times in a 2008 interview. “They never, never, never knew.” He lived with his partner, psychoanalyst Dr. Eugene Glynn, for 50 years before Glynn’s death in May 2007.

Sendak’s illustrations were first published in 1947 in a textbook titled Atomics for the Millions by Dr. Maxwell Leigh Eidinoff. He spent much of the 1950s illustrating children’s books written by others before beginning to write his own stories.

In 1963 Sendak masterpiece was published Where the Wild Things Are which was a shocking contrast found in typical children’s book of the time.

He died on May 8, 2012, at the age of 83 from complications of a stroke.

Maurice Sendak Quotes

“There must be more to life than having everything.”
― Maurice Sendak

“I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more.”
― Maurice Sendak

“And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.”
― Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

“You cannot write for children. They’re much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them. ”
― Maurice Sendak

“There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen”
― Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

“F**k them is what I say. I hate those ebooks. They can not be the future. They may well be. I will be dead. I won’t give a s**t.”
― Maurice Sendak

“Let the wild rumpus start!”
― Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

“Art has always been my salvation. And my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can’t explain — I don’t need to. I know that if there’s a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart. Or if I walk in the woods and I see an animal, the purpose of my life was to see that animal. I can recollect it, I can notice it. I’m here to take note of. And that is beyond my ego, beyond anything that belongs to me, an observer, an observer.”
― Maurice Sendak

“A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.”
― Maurice Sendak

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Sendak

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