« April 2010 | Main | June 2010 »
Andrej Dugin "Hamlet and Ophelia"
What to say about Andrej Dugin? I discovered his work in the Communication Arts Illustration Annual issue. I love it for its inventive mash-up between old world aesthetics and surrealist logic. Plus it's awfully pretty.
is out on June 15th, and online samples lead me to believe this is going to be yet another glorious, heady dose of quasi-historic-fabulism spiked with alternatively shredding and sparkling strings. Can. Not. Wait.
Judith Schaechter "Mad Meg"
I have two pieces of fantastic news related to stained glass sorceress and Phantasmaphile pal, Judith Schaechter.
First off, she has a glowing (literally) new show up at Claire Oliver gallery called "Beauty and the Beef." This work is filed under the "must see in person" category. It's difficult to describe her colored light boxes in a way that does it justice: melted candy mazes; church windows on acid; crystallized fictions... But whatever you decide to call it, be sure to see the show by June 26th. Unmissable.
Secondly, I'll have the honor of hosting Ms. Schaechter at OBSERVATORY on Saturday, June 5th. Please come! It will be such a treat to hear her speak:
“The Beautiful Experience” with Judith Schaechter
Date: Saturday, June 5th
Time: 8pm
Admission: $5
Presented by PhantasmaphileWorld-renowned stained glass artist, Judith Schaechter, will share her thoughts on Beauty through an image-rich presentation based upon her own research and ruminations.
Her talk is in response to the growing dialogue in the art world started by Dave Hickey 17 years ago, when he first published his book “The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays in Beauty.”
In Ms. Schaechter’s words: “As someone who’s always approached the fine arts from a sort of wonky angle — a female craftsperson from Philadelphia who is adamantly figurative and decorative — I have a personal stake in the notion that beauty is not ALWAYS in the eye of the beholder, but sometimes in the object beheld.”
Judith Schaechter has lived and worked in Philadelphia since graduating in 1983 with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design Glass Program. She has exhibited widely, including in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. She is the recipient of many grants, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Crafts, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, The Joan Mitchell Award, two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts awards, The Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a Leeway Foundation grant. Her work is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Corning Museum of Glass, The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution and numerous other collections. Judith has taught at The Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, The Penland School of Crafts, Toyama Institute of Glass (Toyama, Japan), Rhode Island School of Design, The Pennsylvania Academy, the New York Academy of Art and at The University of the Arts. Judith’s work was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and she is a 2008 USA Artists Rockefeller Fellow.
She currently has an exhibition at Claire Oliver Gallery, “Beauty and the Beef,” up until June 26.
www.judithschaechter.com
http://judithschaechterglass.blogspot.com/
gallery: http://www.claireoliver.com/
You can get directions to OBSERVATORY by clicking here. You can find out more about OBSERVATORY here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.
Eugene Berman "Medusa's Corner" 1943
Just when I think I've totally tapped Surrealist movement's tree, I find a lesser-known painter from the era to fall in love with. Eugene Berman's musty, mythological work is new to me, and the muted palette and undulous linework seem a precursor to later fabulist heavyweights like Paula Rego. There are not very many examples from his oeuvre online, but you can see the painting above in the "Unconscious Unbound: Surrealism in America" show up at Michael Rosenfeld gallery until May 28th.
Image by Daniel Margulies at Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna, May 2009.
TONIGHT at OBSERVATORY:
Come to Your Senses: An Evening with Physician and Curator Kóan Jeff Baysa, M.D.
Date: TONIGHT - Friday, May 21st
Time: 8pm
Admission: $5
Phantasmaphile presents Come to Your Senses, an evening with physician and international curator extraordinaire, Kóan Jeff Baysa, M.D.
Come to Your Senses is an image-rich presentation that looks at a decade of curatorial practice, informed by Dr. Baysa’s medical background, that centers on the sensate human body as viewed systematically through its twelve cranial nerves, eight senses, and specific organ systems.
Kóan Jeff Baysa, M.D. is an international curatorial advisor who builds new audiences and markets through innovative contexts. He bridges art and science with credentials as a physician, fragrance researcher, medical suspense and nonfiction writer, Whitney Museum Independent Study Program - Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow, and member of AICA, the association of international art critics. Dr. Baysa has curated shows for the London Biennale, LA International Biennial, Chinese Biennial, Whitney Museum, Canon Corporation, The United Nations, and has organised and participated in art events throughout the US and in Paris, Cork, London, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Beijing, Bandung, Hong Kong, Manila, Santiago, Singapore, Cologne, Seoul, St. Petersburg, Hanoi, Chennai, Mexico City, and Yokohama. He has organised art events in parallel with Art Basel Miami and the Frieze Art Fair.
On the boards of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School University and the Art Omi International Artist Colony, he has presented lectures at NextMed in California, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and MoMA in New York. He is on the special advisory board for the Chelsea Art Museum and is a creative advisor for 3 Legged dog, a media and theater group, both in New York, and is an associate of The Daily Brand, a multi-disciplinary communications agency based in Los Angeles.
He has written for Flavorpill and Art Asia Pacific, is the Pacific editor for d’Art International (Toronto), and is a contributing writer and art editor for the contemporary culture periodical aRUde (New York), contributing writer for THE magazine (Los Angeles), guest curator for the online publication Ctrl+P Journal of Contemporary Art (Asia) and critic-reviewer for the online art journal ArtSlant (International). He has recently lectured at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC and the Anthenaeum in La Jolla, California, and has been invited to lecture at the Carnegie Institute in Washington DC, and universities in Hanoi, Vietnam, Bodrum, Turkey, and Poznan, Poland.
The critic-in residence for the 2006 Art Omi International Artist Colony in Ghent, New York, in 2007 he received a Ford Foundation grant to lecture on contemporary curatorial practice at the Hanoi University of Culture in Vietnam and conducted a survey of contemporary art in south and north Vietnam. In March 2009, he presented lectures and conducted workshops on the curatorial process from his unique perspective as a physician-curator, at Zayed University campuses in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Born and raised in Hawaii and completing his medical training at UCSF with a fellowship in allergy and clinical immunology, Dr. Baysa divides his time between New York and Los Angeles. While practicing medicine in Hawaii he was an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at the John A. Burns School of Medicine. With a special interest in the role of the sense of smell in health and aesthetics, he is a member of the Fragrance Advisory Board. Still an active physician, Dr. Baysa has shifted from a clinical practice to focus on independent clinical research investigating olfactory stimuli and their potential beneficial effects on memory disorders in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and PTSD.
You can find out more about this presentation here. You can get directions to OBSERVATORY by clicking here. You can find out more about OBSERVATORY here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.
The exceptional Gallery of Surrealism is releasing a new publication of Nino Japaridze's remarkable watercolor etchings. Japaridze seems to be in the same artistic lineage as William Blake, what with her delicate hand and ethereal imagery. I love the way each component of the picture flows into the next in a sort of dream stream, if you will.
Oh MAN I wish I could go to this. TONIGHT, at Hiro Ballroom in NYC:
Special Live Event –“Return to the Pleasure Dome”, a benefit concert event for Anthology Film Archives with a Life Achievement Honor for Kenneth Anger. Featuring Technicolor Skull (Kenneth Anger and Brian Butler), Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, The Virgins, Moby & other special guests, Wednesday, May 19 at the Hiro Ballroom, NYC
Benefit Ticket Options:$99 – Mezzanine tickets available through Ticketweb!!!
Floor seating available through PayPal:
Tables at $500 / person (4 people per table):
Booths at $5000 (priority seating for up to 6 people)
If you go, I will be rabidly jealous!
Melissa Haslam "Honey Hive" 2009
I am simply crazy about bees and all things bee-related. So it's no wonder that Melissa Haslam's piece above has set me all abuzz (I'm sorry, couldn't resist). All of her work is an enchanting blend of nature and the fantastical, and has a sort of fable logic to it. Lovely.
Dorothea Tanning "Costume Design for The Witch (Monstre)" 1950
It should come as no surprise that Dorothea Tanning is one of my very favorite artists. So I was over the moon to learn that The Drawing Center currently has an exhibition of her exquisite, imaginative theatre designs:
Dorothea Tanning
Early Designs for the Stage
April 23 – July 23, 2010
Dorothea Tanning: Early Designs for the Stage will present approximately twenty hand-drawn ballet costume designs by Dorothea Tanning (b.1910) created in collaboration with the early modernist choreographer, George Balanchine. Dating from 1945–1953, the designs will be shown together for the first time, and will be accompanied by archival photographs and ephemera related to the staged productions. This series explores the dynamic intersections of dance, performance, visual art, and costume, while drawing important parallels to Tanning’s early discoveries in both painting and sculpture. Taking the form of traditional fashion plates, the blithely rendered drawings are suggestive of bodies in motion and portrayals of outlandish characters through the quirky detailing and sensual drapery of the costumes. This exhibition is curated by Assistant Curators Joanna Kleinberg and Rachel Liebowitz.
And on June 10th, they'll be having a panel discussion:
Dorothea Tanning: A Dialogue Between Visual Art and Performance
Panel Discussion
Thursday June 10, 6:30 PM
Moderated by Joanna Kleinberg and Rachel Liebowitz, the co-curators of Dorothea Tanning: Early Designs for the Stage, this discussion will focus on the relationship between the visual arts and performance in the twentieth century with a particular focus on Tanning's collaboration with George Balanchine throughout the 1940s and 50s, which challenged both artists to expand their ideas about their own work, and the viewer's perception of the dynamic intersections of dance, performance, design, and visual art. Panelists will include Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art; Robert Greskovic, freelance writer and dance critic for The Wall Street Journal; and Anna Finke, Wardrobe Supervisor for Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
Marvelous.
COMING SOON to OBSERVATORY:
Come to Your Senses: An Evening with Physician and Curator Kóan Jeff Baysa, M.D.
Date: Friday, May 21st
Time: 8pm
Admission: $5
Phantasmaphile presents Come to Your Senses, an evening with physician and international curator extraordinaire, Kóan Jeff Baysa, M.D.
Come to Your Senses is an image-rich presentation that looks at a decade of curatorial practice, informed by Dr. Baysa’s medical background, that centers on the sensate human body as viewed systematically through its twelve cranial nerves, eight senses, and specific organ systems.
Kóan Jeff Baysa, M.D. is an international curatorial advisor who builds new audiences and markets through innovative contexts. He bridges art and science with credentials as a physician, fragrance researcher, medical suspense and nonfiction writer, Whitney Museum Independent Study Program - Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow, and member of AICA, the association of international art critics. Dr. Baysa has curated shows for the London Biennale, LA International Biennial, Chinese Biennial, Whitney Museum, Canon Corporation, The United Nations, and has organised and participated in art events throughout the US and in Paris, Cork, London, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Beijing, Bandung, Hong Kong, Manila, Santiago, Singapore, Cologne, Seoul, St. Petersburg, Hanoi, Chennai, Mexico City, and Yokohama. He has organised art events in parallel with Art Basel Miami and the Frieze Art Fair.
On the boards of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School University and the Art Omi International Artist Colony, he has presented lectures at NextMed in California, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and MoMA in New York. He is on the special advisory board for the Chelsea Art Museum and is a creative advisor for 3 Legged dog, a media and theater group, both in New York, and is an associate of The Daily Brand, a multi-disciplinary communications agency based in Los Angeles.
He has written for Flavorpill and Art Asia Pacific, is the Pacific editor for d’Art International (Toronto), and is a contributing writer and art editor for the contemporary culture periodical aRUde (New York), contributing writer for THE magazine (Los Angeles), guest curator for the online publication Ctrl+P Journal of Contemporary Art (Asia) and critic-reviewer for the online art journal ArtSlant (International). He has recently lectured at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC and the Anthenaeum in La Jolla, California, and has been invited to lecture at the Carnegie Institute in Washington DC, and universities in Hanoi, Vietnam, Bodrum, Turkey, and Poznan, Poland.
The critic-in residence for the 2006 Art Omi International Artist Colony in Ghent, New York, in 2007 he received a Ford Foundation grant to lecture on contemporary curatorial practice at the Hanoi University of Culture in Vietnam and conducted a survey of contemporary art in south and north Vietnam. In March 2009, he presented lectures and conducted workshops on the curatorial process from his unique perspective as a physician-curator, at Zayed University campuses in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Born and raised in Hawaii and completing his medical training at UCSF with a fellowship in allergy and clinical immunology, Dr. Baysa divides his time between New York and Los Angeles. While practicing medicine in Hawaii he was an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at the John A. Burns School of Medicine. With a special interest in the role of the sense of smell in health and aesthetics, he is a member of the Fragrance Advisory Board. Still an active physician, Dr. Baysa has shifted from a clinical practice to focus on independent clinical research investigating olfactory stimuli and their potential beneficial effects on memory disorders in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and PTSD.
You can find out more about this presentation here. You can get directions to OBSERVATORY by clicking here. You can find out more about OBSERVATORY here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.
I've raved about Cynthia von Buhler's beautiful artwork here before, so you can imagine how delighted I was to receive a review copy of her new children's book, But Who Will Bell the Cats?
It's a lovely story, but the real star of the show here is von Buhler's obsessively crafted visual world. Each picture in the book is actually a photograph of a unique diorama-esque scene which she designed, built, and decorated, then populated with painted character cut-outs (you can actually see her incrediblly labor-intensive, behind-the-scenes process here). The overall effect is unique and captivating, and this book will no doubt be adored by children and adults alike for many years to come.
Johfra "The Vision of Hermes Trismegistos" 1985
Exciting news: my feller and I have become engaged, as of this Saturday, May 1st in Vermont. Huzzah! Hooray! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
(And Johfra's chemical wedding painting above was introduced to me by Lady Lavona's glorious tumblr).
Recent Comments