Thursday, October 29, 2009

BRITISH ARTS COUNCIL OPPOSES LONDON MAYOR

Boris Johnson and the Arts Council, London are battling it out. Earlier this month, the mayor was thwarted in his attempt to nominate a political supporter, Veronica Wadley, as head of the council. Critics including current Arts Council England head Liz Forgan said that Wadley had “almost no arts credibility,” while culture secretary Ben Bradshaw blocked the nomination, saying it violated conventions against cronyism.

Boris Johnson has refused to back down. After at first threatening to leave the post open, he has now started the search to fill the position from scratch, suggesting that he would pick Wadley if she applied again.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

DALLAS SCORES AGAIN

Good article in Art in America.
Dallas is an exciting place to be right now.

Friday, October 23, 2009

BRITISH ARTS COUNCIL SELECTS 12 ART PROJECTS FOR UK's 2012 OLYMPICS

A giant human puppet of Lady Godiva and three thirty-foot crocheted lions are among the artworks selected to showcase British culture at the 2012 Olympics, reports the BBC. The selected artists and groups are: the Pacitti Theater Company, Shauna Richardson, Alfie Dennen and Paula Le Dieu, the Owl Project and Ed Carter, Anthony McCall and Fact, Brian Irvine and John McIlduff, Craig Coulthard, Lone Twin, Alex Hartley, Marc Rees, Imagineer Productions, and Leeds Canvas.

More than two thousand entries were received in what the Arts Council dubbed the most ambitious and wide-ranging art prize in the UK.

The twelve winning designs, from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the nine English regions, will share nearly nine million dollars. Each project is inspired by its location and celebrates the Olympic Games.

The twelve winning commissions will be developed across 2010 and 2011, among them a full-size football pitch created within woodland in the Scottish Borders and an environmentally sustainable watermill.

FEW PICS FROM FRIEZE

Here are several highlights from the Frieze art fair in London that took place last week.

Walead Beshty at Thomas Dane

Nigel Cooke at Modern Art

Ed Kay at Dicksmith Gallery

Damien Hirst at Tate

TWO BY TWO FOR AIDS AND ART

This weekend is the amfar 2x2 annual gala which is held at The Rachofsky House

There are some amazing artits on view and for purchase.

Click here to find out more about the charity.

Thanks to the phenomenal support of the participating artists, dealers, sponsors and patrons, Two by Two for AIDS and Art’s annual gala and art auction has raised $21 million in its first decade in support of amfAR’s AIDS research initiatives and the DMA’s contemporary art acquisition program. An eagerly anticipated event that quickly sells out, the benefit features a seated dinner for 400 guests with both a live and silent auction of major works of contemporary art and unique luxury items.

Two by Two is such a successful event because it provides an opportunity to support two very worthy organizations. amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, has made great strides in essential AIDS research initiatives over the last 25 years, and Two x Two has become amfAR’s largest fundraiser in the United States. The Dallas Museum of Art has added over 70 major works of contemporary art to their permanent collection with Two x Two proceeds donated to their Contemporary Art Acquistion Fund. Two x Two is also the DMA’s largest annual fundraiser.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

IRVING PENN 1917-2009

Irving Penn, one of the twentieth century’s most prolific and influential photographers of fashion and the famous, whose signature blend of classical elegance and cool minimalism was recognizable to magazine readers and museumgoers worldwide, died Wednesday morning at his home in Manhattan.

Penn’s talent for picturing his subjects with compositional clarity and economy earned him the widespread admiration of readers of Vogue during his long association with the magazine, beginning in 1943. It also brought him recognition in the art world; his photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries and are prized by collectors.
He was most famous for photographing Parisian fashion models and the world’s great cultural figures, but he seemed equally at home photographing Peruvian peasants or bunion pads.
A courtly man whose gentle demeanor masked an intense perfectionism, Penn adopted the pose of a humble craftsman while helping to shape a field known for putting on airs. Although schooled in painting and design, he chose to define himself as a photographer, scraping his early canvases of paint so that they might serve a more useful life as backdrops to his pictures.
Penn had the good fortune of working for and collaborating with two of the twentieth century’s most inventive and influential magazine art directors, Alexey Brodovitch and Alexander Liberman.
He studied with Brodovitch in Philadelphia as a young man and came to New York in 1937 as his unpaid design assistant at Harper’s Bazaar. But it was under Liberman, at Vogue, that Penn forged his career as a photographer.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

TURNER PRIZE 2009

TURNER PRIZE 2009

Tate Britain 6 October 2009 – 3 January 2010

The four artists who have been shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2009 are Enrico David, Roger Hiorns, Lucy Skaer and Richard Wright.

Enrico David has been nominated for his solo exhibitions How Do You Love Dzzzzt By Mammy? at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, and Bulbous Marauder at the Seattle Art Museum. Enrico David is a contemporary surrealist who creates rich and profoundly original painting, drawing and sculpture which are disconcerting, confrontational and beautiful.

Roger Hiorns for his solo exhibitions Seizure, Artangel commission, Harper Road, London and at Corvi Mora, London. Hiorns creates arresting sculpture and installation combining unusual materials. His exploration of chemical processes took spectacular effect in Seizure, in which a derelict flat in South London was filled with liquid copper sulphate, which after a period of time encrusted every surface of the space with blue crystals.

Lucy Skaer for her solo exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and A Boat Used as a Vessel at the Kunsthalle Basel. Skaer makes drawings, sculptures and films which often take found photographic sources as their starting point. Rooted in reality, yet subjected to a process of elaborate transformation, Skaer's images hover in the space between recognition and ambiguity, figuration and abstraction.

Richard Wright for the work he exhibited in the 55th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh and his exhibition at the Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh. Wright creates subtle and exquisite wall paintings that respond directly to the architecture in which they are created. Often awkwardly placed in discreet locations, they combine graphic imagery and intricate patterning from sources as varied as Medieval painting, graphics and typography.

The Turner Prize award is £40,000 with £25,000 going to the winner and £5,000 each for the other shortlisted artists. The Prize, established in 1984, is awarded to a British artist under fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding 21 April 2009. It is intended to promote public discussion of new developments in contemporary British art and is widely recognised as one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe.

For more info please click HERE

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

FRIEZE 2009

Once again the social season is off and running and next week in London will be the annual art fair Known as Frieze. The Dates are 15-18 Oct click here for more info.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

MODERN ART NOTES

If you havent read Tyler Green's blog you REALLY need to set it as a favorite.
One of the best art blogs youll ever read.