San Francisco Fall Show 2024 - Black & White Soirée
This year on October 16, the San Francisco Fall Show once again hosted the highly anticipated fine and decorative arts event and celebrated its 42nd anniversary. Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture Festival Pavilion in San Francisco united an array of fine and decorative art dealers and this year, the program's event revolved around the theme "Black and White", celebrating the contrast, elegance and enduring allure of this classic pairing. Show Chair Suzanne Tucker joined by honorary co-chairs Aerin Lauder and Wes Gordon, along with gala chairs including Vanessa Getty, Alexis and Trevor Traina, Dede Wilsey and other guests As the longest-running art, antiques, and design fair on the West Coast, the San Francisco Fall Show is celebrated worldwide and cherished within the San Francisco Bay Area's vibrant art and design scene.
Show dates October 16 - 19, 2024 Tickets
Photography by Drew Altizer
$25m Claude Monet's "Nymphéas" paintings is up for grabs
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Claude Monet, the renowned French Impressionist painter, created a series of approximately 250 oil paintings depicting water lilies in his garden at Giverny. These works, known as the "Nymphéas" series, are among his most famous and valuable. In recent years, some of Monet's Water Lily paintings have sold for astronomical sums at auction, with prices reaching well over $25 million. For example, in 2014, one of Monet's Water Lily paintings sold for nearly $54 million at Sotheby's in London. The high prices these works command reflect their importance in art history, Monet's status as a master of Impressionism, and the enduring appeal of his serene, light-filled depictions of his garden pond.
Claude Monet, Nymphéas (1897–99) Image: Courtesy Christie's Images Ltd 2024.
Christie's Hong Kong is set to host a landmark auction on September 26, marking the opening of its new Asia-Pacific headquarters in The Henderson building. The star of this inaugural sale will be one of Claude Monet's "Nymphéas" paintings, a water lily work created 125 years ago. This piece is particularly significant as it represents one of Monet's earliest forays into the water lily theme, which would later become his most famous subject.
This auction marks the first time this particular water lily painting has been offered for sale publicly. Christie's has placed a pre-sale estimate of HK$200 million to HK$280 million on the work, equivalent to approximately $25 million to $35 million.
Edward Tsokolakyan Art
Real -life Edward Scissorhands
Once in a while I stumbble upon a new talent on the internet and they never cease to amaze me. This time my guest is real-life Edward Scissorhands, artist Edward Tsokolakyan, who handles paper like a pro. And not just paper. Take a look at Edward's Instagram where he shares some of his most creative work, like portraits made out of an egg, yes, egg! And while you're at it, you can request him to make your very own portrait.
Giulia: Was art always in your life?
Edward: I loved drawing since childhood, I never studied it. I just drew and created for myself.
Giulia: How did it start?
Edward: I once saw this person on the internet who was cutting portraits from paper, I got so inspired and interested that I decided to give it a try. I assume I am not doing that bad.(laughs) I love to surprise myself and others. I always try to make or create something new that myself and others will love.
Giulia; What’s the trick to papercut art ?
Edward: Not telling you my secrets. The only thing I can share is everything that I do, I do myself, from the first attempt. It's a huge and a quiet difficult work that I do.
Giulia: What inspires you?
Edward: I love everything new and complicated that may not work from the first time, something that challenges me and requires practice. I don't look for easy way out. I always try to reach the perfection in everything that I do. The most important thing is that I get satisfaction from it.
Giulia: You’re very successful, what piece of advice can you give to young talent?
Edward: The advice I can give to a young talent is not to give up, continue to work and develop your talant. There is always something to learn.
Alexander Bronfer - ART
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Israeli photographer Alexander Bronfer was born in Ukraine and studied in Saint Petersburg. Bronfer was the finalist of multiple international photography festivals and today, after four years living and working photographing Dead Sea, his inpsiration is derived from Israel and the beauty of the Dead Sea.
He carries his camera every where he goes. His work is inspired and created after having a conversation with the people he photographs.
Meadows Museum and Museo del Traje Will Collaborate On Fashion Exhibition
Image: courtesy of Meadow Museum by Kevin Todora; Museo del Traje, Madrid by Munio Rodil Ares
The Meadows Museum in Dallas has announced a major exhibition. The exhibition will combine paintings of Spanish fashion, pairing it from its historic dress and accessories collection from the Museo del Traje in Madrid. The exhibition which plans to open up on September 19th,2022, will present how fashion trends in Spain have changed over five hundred years.
The pairings will include Ignacio Zuloaga’s The Bullfighter ‘El Segovianito’ (1912) accompanied by a traje de luces of the same colour, Zuloaga’s Portrait of the Duchess of Arión, Marchioness of Bay (1918) displayed alongside a mantón de Manila.
Image: courtesy of Meadow Museum by Michael Bodycomb; Museo del Traje, Madrid by Gonzalo Cases Ortega
On Selling and Suffering: A Profile of Alfred Kubin
by Adam Heardman via MutualArt
The reclusive Austrian symbolist’s dark, Schopenhauer-inspired drawings continue to shatter estimates. Here’s what you should know about Alfred Kubin.
Among the final writings of Arthur Schopenhauer is a collection of essays and aphorisms, the first of which comprises his thoughts ‘On the Suffering of the World.’ In his signature manner of subjective, personality-inflected philosophy, Schopenhauer begins: “If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world: for it is absurd to suppose that the endless affliction of which the world is everywhere full…should be entirely purposeless and accidental.”
“Each individual misfortune, to be sure, seems an exceptional occurrence,” Schopenhauer observes, his tongue half in cheek, half clenched agonizingly between his sharpest teeth; “but misfortune, in general, is the rule.”
The general misfortune of all mankind has been the concern of certain visual artists who have, through observation of suffering and strife, lent colors and symbols to our understanding of the unendurable depths of human experience, and in so doing have seared themselves into our cultural consciousness. Artists like Francisco de Goya, Hieronymus Bosch, and Edvard Munch have achieved a timeless reputation because of their contributions to our syntax of suffering, our lexicon of bad luck, our parlance of pain.
Strange then, to come across an accomplished artist concerned with such themes who has at times fallen into a kind of obscurity (though he enjoyed some reputation as an illustrator and lithograph-artist in his own lifetime). As Schopenhauer himself says, “Not the least of the torments which plague our existence is the constant pressure of time, which never lets us so much as draw breath but pursues us all like a taskmaster with a whip.” Compared with certain other artists, Time the Taskmaster has, by turns, not been particularly kind to Alfred Kubin.
But if the art market is any kind of barometer, summer of 2019 suddenly represents the highest peak of Kubin’s influence and popularity - at the very least since an exhibition of his oils, watercolors, and drawings graced New York’s Galerie St. Etienne back in 1957. The catalogue for that exhibition admitted that it “took many years until Kubin’s strange and unconventional style found full recognition”, though in that year, the year of his 80th birthday, Kubin was maybe already considered “one of the great graphic artists of this century and one of its foremost book illustrators.”
His tenebrous star perhaps hasn’t shone as brightly since, until June this year. The Impressionist and Modern Sales at Sotheby’s on June 19 and 20 saw market highs for Kubin works. All sixteen of his pieces which came to auction over the two days sold, some of them doubling, tripling, or even multiplying by a factor of 8, their pre-sale estimates.
Epidemic (1900-1901) sold for £963,000 against a high estimate of £200,000. The Fate of Mankind III (1902) and The Hour of Death (1900) each raised £855,000 against high estimates of £120,000 and £150,000 respectively. The top performer against estimate was The Plague (1903-1904), which came to the Day Sale with a high estimate of £70,000 and sold for £579,000.
Strange then, to come across an accomplished artist concerned with such themes who has at times fallen into a kind of obscurity (though he enjoyed some reputation as an illustrator and lithograph-artist in his own lifetime). As Schopenhauer himself says, “Not the least of the torments which plague our existence is the constant pressure of time, which never lets us so much as draw breath but pursues us all like a taskmaster with a whip.” Compared with certain other artists, Time the Taskmaster has, by turns, not been particularly kind to Alfred Kubin.
But if the art market is any kind of barometer, summer of 2019 suddenly represents the highest peak of Kubin’s influence and popularity - at the very least since an exhibition of his oils, watercolors, and drawings graced New York’s Galerie St. Etienne back in 1957. The catalogue for that exhibition admitted that it “took many years until Kubin’s strange and unconventional style found full recognition”, though in that year, the year of his 80th birthday, Kubin was maybe already considered “one of the great graphic artists of this century and one of its foremost book illustrators.”
His tenebrous star perhaps hasn’t shone as brightly since, until June this year. The Impressionist and Modern Sales at Sotheby’s on June 19 and 20 saw market highs for Kubin works. All sixteen of his pieces which came to auction over the two days sold, some of them doubling, tripling, or even multiplying by a factor of 8, their pre-sale estimates.
As an illustrator, he has an eye for the emblematic. His symbols say no more than is necessary. They’re bold without being cloying. He draws with brevity but manages to unfold, in the suggested but unseen moments before and after his particular chosen frame, rich narratives that are as historical as they are personal.
Alfred Kubin, The Hour of Death (1900)
Schopenhauer, one of Kubin’s great influences, indulges in a kind of faux-disbelief at the purposelessness of suffering, in order to flip it around into a positive cognitive experience. Kubin observes a similar split between incredulity and faith. He revels in the accidents of association which allow for a symbolic language to arise, but is strangely disbelieving in their existence as mere accidents. This is a kind of negative path to faith, to magic. He, like Schopenhauer, is a sweet darkness, like treacle or liquorice. An acquired taste, for sure, but generally rich as a rule.
Much like Schopenhauer’s late-career aphorisms, and also, weirdly, much like contemporary internet memes, Kubin’s drawings operate as self contained units of cultural consciousness, presenting a narrative as rich as a Goethe story all at once in a single frame, in one image. Like a comet with its tail of light, their immediate form trails energy, historical significance, and emotional depth.
The Fate of Mankind III shows exactly Shopenhauer’s “taskmaster,” sweeping the living towards the cliff of their deaths. Though ‘master’ is a misgendered term here - the figure is a faceless but all-powerful woman. There’s a psychosexual element at play.
The Hour of Death shows Kubin’s philosophic imagination at its most ingenious. The scything hand of the clock beheads men as it turns, the severed heads caught in a net below. Though it’s horrifying, it cannot comfortably be said to be pessimistic. We delight in its creativity and ingenuity, even as we recoil from the graphic imagery and stark invocation of mortality. By turns we are repulsed and compelled, like with all the best horror.
Schopenhauer the philosopher is often said to have had the mind of a poet or artist, but the overwhelming achievements of his predecessor, Goethe, meant that he (and his near-contemporaries in German metaphysics) turned to philosophy as their imaginative outlet. Certainly, he takes a sort of monochrome delight in conjuring images, correlatives and metaphors to elucidate his theory of the metaphysical ‘will’ of the world. In the compulsive picture-making of the Austrian Kubin, many of Schopenhauer’s rhetorical imagery find its visual form.
Alfred Kubin was born in 1877 in the town of Leitmeritz. His mother died when he was young, and at the age of 19, Kubin attempted suicide at the site of her grave. His preoccupation with death began early, and developed through his experiences in the Austrian army and in his artistic practice throughout two world wars. It’s now well known that Kubin spent his entire life in Austria, and from 1906 until his death led a reclusive existence in a 12th Century castle estate, Zwickledt, in upper Austria. From here, he drew the phantoms and spectres that haunted Europe through conflict, strife, and the rise of fascism.
Alfred Kubin, Head of a Sick Man (1921)
It’s tempting, though worrying, to read in his contemporary significance some intimation of similar dark forces beginning to rear up in the fractious politics of the West. Schopenhauer talks metaphorically of the “torments that plague our existence.” Kubin draws The Plague manifest and embodied, sweeping down in an exponential curve towards a pock-marked ground, like the trend of a collapsing economy, or the menace of fascistic impulses, or literal sickness itself.
But the clamour for his works in the market is of course also influenced by the feeling of revelation whenever they do appear. It’s significant that the 16 works which sold last month were “restituted to the heirs of Max and Hertha Morgenstern.” Max was Kubin’s friend and great patron during his lifetime. He was a great and renowned collector of literature and art but was forced to leave behind many possessions when, as an Austrian Jew, he was compelled to flee to England in 1938.
His collection was looted severally, mostly by advancing Russian forces. In their appearance at auction after being restituted, these Kubin works gain an extra layer of pain-inflected revelation. The excitement of their rediscovery and return nevertheless conjure the darkness inherent in their initial loss. This atmosphere chimes well with the weird wisdom of the pictures themselves.
Each gouache or drawing which emerges feels like some precious insight into the human psyche, or a dark slice of illustrated history wrested from the gothic seclusion of Zwickledt.
The performance of this most recent and most significant collection of Kubin works at auction confirms his strange power, and suggests a robustness to his reputation. He’s a divided figure - by some metrics almost wildly popular, but retaining an air of mystery, evasiveness, and intrigue. Through him, we can discover the compulsions of our darker zones. But maybe we find it difficult to look too long or too directly into such spaces. Perhaps we love and are horrified by Kubin because he knows what Edgar Allan Poe (whose works he famously illustrated) knew, and shows it to us unflinchingly: “The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”
Highlights from the Art Basel - Miami Beach 2019
A really expensive snack at Art Basel Saturday afternoon costing $120,000. But don’t worry, once eaten it can be replaced, according to the work of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and titled “Comedian.” The work comes with a Certificate of Authenticity.
Gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin shows off ‘Comedian,’ a work by Italian bad-boy artist Maurizio Cattelan that consists of a banana taped to the wall. The piece, one of three bananas on exhibit at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair, sold for $120,000
Lourdes Leon has appeared nearly nude in a simulated orgy at Art Basel in Miami - all in the name of art.
Madonna’s daughter Lourdes Leon has taken part in a simulated orgy for Desigual fashion show called “Love Different” . It’s “a representation in which the Catalan artist affects the most basic and universal act of love: the kiss”. The 23-year-old kissed and undressed another female model as the space transformed into an elaborate orgy. Models simulating sex acts on one another.
A Traffic Jam on the Oceanfront
The Argentine conceptual artist Leandro Erlich has turned one of Miami’s beaches into a traffic jam. Erlich’s work feature 66 life-size sand sculptures of vehicles, bumper-to-bumper along the beach.
Intersection of Fashion and Art
The Russian-born designer Harry Nuriev has collaborated with one of Paris’s most esteemed houses to create “Balenciaga Sofa”. The sofa which is covered in transparent vinyl and stuffed with fabric scraps is on view at Design Miami.
Fashion designer Thom Browne debuted his first public artwork at the Moore Building, named “Palm Tree I” (2019). The 21-foot-tall sculpture is made from pastel-hued seersucker, corduroy and gingham oxford fabrics also used in his clothes — is shaped like a palm tree.
Virgil Abloh X Baccarat
Virgil Abloh recently revealed his latest collaboration with French fine crystal purveyor Baccarat. Collection of ideas titled “Crystal Clear”. Abloh and Baccarat announced the “collection of ideas” in separate Instagram posts. It features sneak peeks of a Baccarat chain-link.
Ed Hardy: Deeper than Skin
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(Courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)
Ed Hardy: Deeper than Skin is the first museum retrospective of Ed Hardy, the renowned tattoo artist known for fueling the late 20th-century boom in the practice of tattoo. Featuring more than 300 objects ranging from paintings and sketches (including drawings Hardy created as a 10-year-old) to prints and three- dimensional works, the exhibition tracks the evolution of tattooing from its “outsider” status through Hardy’s work and influence.
Growing up in Southern California, Hardy was fascinated by the tattoos that he observed on the fathers of his neighborhood friends (mostly servicemen who had served in World War II). During this time Hardy haunted the tattoo parlors on Long Beach Pike, where he learned to draw tattoo designs for his “kiddie tattoo shop.” As a printmaking student at the San Francisco Art Institute in the mid-1960s, Hardy began to study the intricacies of prints by artists such as Dürer, Rembrandt, and Goya at the Legion of Honor’s Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, the department responsible for the Fine Arts Museums’ collection of more than 115,000 works on paper. At the Achenbach he mined for inspiration for his own work. In 1966, while getting one of his first tattoos from the legendary Phil Sparrow in Oakland, Hardy was introduced to a book on Japanese tattooing, which reignited his love for the medium and inspired his future career. Turning down a graduate fellowship in fine arts from Yale University, Hardy instead decided to begin tattooing professionally.
(Courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)
“Ed Hardy reinvented the very nature of the tattoo, inspired in large part by his early exposure to the masterworks in our collection,” says Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “His impact has transformed the tattoo industry and we are delighted to provide the opportunity for wider audiences to explore his tremendous achievement both on and off the body.”
(Courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)
In 1974 Hardy opened Realistic Tattoo in San Francisco, which became the first tattoo studio in the United States to offer custom tattoos based on clients’ wishes and needs.
Ed Hardy On view through October 6, 2019
Visiting \ de Young
Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco. Open 9:30 am–5:15 pm Tuesdays–Sundays. Open select holidays; closed most Mondays.
Art Is A Way Of Survival
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Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, ‘Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.’ So, sometimes with art, it is important just to look.
—Marina Abramovic
All the wide sky
Was there to tempt him as he steered toward heaven.
Ovid - Metamorphoses
Sculpture: Nicola Godden - Icarus Rising
There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
— Leonard Cohen
Artist: Agnes-Cecil
Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.
— Carl Sandburg
“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me
When I found you, my heart found a home.
— Seabird, Falling For You
Artist: Fernando Cobelo
Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.
— Carl Sandburg
You’ll need to suffer to make any real art.
— Chuck Palahniuk
Artist: @andcrespi
I would rather die of passion than of boredom.
— Vincent Van Gogh . Artist: @greenlamp_art
I paint flowers so they will not die.
— Frida Kahlo
Jasper Conran buys Yves Saint Laurent's Villa Mabrouka in Tangier
Yves Saint Laurent’s home in the last decades of his life
Villa Mabrouka, Tangier © Sotheby's
The British fashion and interiors designer Jasper Conran is set to purchase Villa Mabrouka in Tangier from the Fondation Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, Morocco for an undisclosed price. The foundation which was founded by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé.
Villa Mabrouka, Tangier © Sotheby's
Bergé's instructions prior to his death in September 2017 were that all proceeds from the property's sale will go towards the not-for-profit Fondation Jardin Marjorelle. The sale's announcement was made by Bergé's heir, AD100 landscape designer Madison Cox, who wed Bergé shortly before his death and is president of Fondation Jardin Majorelle and the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent in Paris.
Watercolor paintings by Eugenia Gorbacheva
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“I am a watercolor artist and fashion designer. For 10 years I created fashionable clothes, but now I have decided to shine myself entirely in the writing of watercolor paintings. I am inspired by creativity my family and the world around me.”
"Know Where You Stand" by Seth Tara
Self-taught American artist Seth Tara created a series for The History Channel called "Know Where You Stand" for The History Channel. He is a winner of Luerzer’s Archive’s 200 Best Photographers Worldwide and winner of numerous international awards including a Cannes Lion for his brand campaign for The History Channel, “Know Where You Stand,” which has been translated into 30 languages and published in 130 countries.
He was born into a lineage of artists and artisans, including bronze and Macramé sculptors, golden-age cartoonists, interior designers, vacuum repairmen, celebrity stylists (and a tailor to the Czar of Russia). Nearly all of his pictures are direct prints from original film negatives with no digital alteration and taken largely hand-held. His pictures hang in collections around the world
Clever Photo-manipulation by Naro Pinosa
a visionary of few words
Based in Spain, digital artist Naro Pinosa creates photo manipulated collages, which he mainly shares on his Instagram. Whether it be Greek sculptures or classical paintings, he takes this imagery and layers them on the photographs in an absurd manner. By combining the old and the new with a sense of humor, the collages question the viewer’s perception and explore themes of sexuality and nostalgia.
The Picasso Painting His Wife Left Him Is Fake
Artsy Marital Turmoil
Divorce can be a nasty thing especially if you are a Wall Street billionaires. Here is a story of Bill & Sue Gross whom Forbes reports has a net worth of $2.5 billion. When couple decided to split there was one thing they did had to decide who will keep and that was Picasso's famous Le Repos painting.
Pablo Picasso, Le Repos, 1932, a highlight of Sotheby's Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale. Courtesy of Sotheby's
The painting was created in 1932 and features Marie-Thérèse Walter, a 17-year-old French model whom Picasso began a relationship with when he was 45 and still living with his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, and their five-year-old son. Picasso's affair with Walter started in 1930. In 1935, when Khokhlova found out about the relationship, Walter was living in an apartment near the family. In 1936, Walter had a daughter with Picasso, whom she brought along when she moved into a 17th-century château in Normandy.
Sue & Bill Gross flipped the coin and Sue won. But Sue didn't even need to win the bet, because Sue already taken and sold the painting before and replaced it with a fake. Picasso's Le Repos painting features thick black lines outlining the profile and hands of Walter, whose skin is a mix of violets and white, against a green and red backdrop. It was easy to Sue to copy. Bill found out about this when he told Sue he will arrange to transfer the painting from house to another and Sue answered, "It wasn't necessary".
Back in 2015, Bill told an investor that his wife, aka "the artist in the family," "likes to paint replicas of some of the famous pieces, using an overhead projector to copy the outlines and then just sort of fill in the spaces."
The paining made it's way to Sotheby's and will be put up for an auction.
Japanese graphic designer Shusaku Takaoka's pure wit
What if the Mona Lisa got tired of her old silk robes and decided to trade them in for a trendy jumpsuit?
Shusaku Takaoka is a Japanese graphic designer author of these witty and surprising illustrations. The artist is inspired by our modern society to juxtapose visuals who form a funny set and sometimes denouncing aspects of an ultra-consumer and over-connected world. Graphic and original fabrications to discover.
"Hylas and the Nymphs" Art removed from museum to "prompt conversation"
Should museums even enter political grounds at all?
Prompted by the #MeToo, Clare Gannaway, the Manchester Gallery of Art's Curator of Contemporary Art temporarily removes "Hylas and the Nymphs," the 1896 painting by J.W. Waterhouse, from public view to 'prompt conversation' about the Museum's collection of Victorian nudes. Gannaway posted a placard in place of the missing painting and invited museum guests to write their reactions on Post-It notes.
The 1896 painting depicts the myth of Hylas, the adored companion of Heracles (better known by his Roman name, Hercules) , who disappeared after he was dragged into a spring by nymphs.
In place of the pre-Raphaelite painting, the wall now has a printed sign asking gallery visitors to start a “conversation about how we display art and interpret artworks in Manchester’s public collection.”
Gannaway says the part of the museum which houses Victorian nudes "presents the female body as either a ‘passive decorative form’ or a ‘femme fatale’. Let’s challenge this Victorian fantasy!" She wants to re-contextualize the collection of Victorian nudes. "For me personally," she said, "there is a sense of embarrassment that we haven’t dealt with it sooner."
Is Gannaway not understanding the art correctly?
The nymphs are not 'passive decorative form", instead they are a strong form who appear to win over someone like Hercules by taking him into their realm.
Should museums even be involved into political topics? Gannaway may translate the painting the way she wants, but she must let the public have access to a work of art that was made nearly a century before she was born and has been beloved by the public since that time.
Sigalit Landau: SALT YEAR'S
The magic of salt
Landau invites us to embark on a journey facilitated by the unique feature of one natural resource, salt. Drawing inspiration from the topographical, historical, biblical, cultural, political and environmental realms of the Dead Sea, she turns to the natural process of salt crystallization, exclusive to the Dead Sea, for her unique artistic techne. Baptizing profane objects in its waters, Landau relies on the Dead Sea to breathe life into inanimate objects, which emerge from their submertion as if belonging to a different time system, a different logic, or another planet yet their transformation unveils the divine and the eternal in nature.
Marking Landau's 15-year oeuvre and fascination with the Dead Sea, ‘Sigalit Landau SALT YEARS’ sheds new light on the fundamental leitmotiv that underlies her multifaceted artistic creation. Offering insights to the artist's visions, this volume explores Landau's career reflecting the breadth of her oeuvre, including exclusive works of art created specifically for this book, behind the scenes photos, personal working notes and perceptive essays. It is an invitation to take part in the transformative power of art and Landau's transformation of the Dead Sea into a laboratory and medium for new experiments, ideas and heart/ground breaking understandings, revealing the death bearing to life sustaining alchemy of salt.
THE BOOK
Landau invites us to embark on a journey facilitated by the unique feature of one natural resource, salt. Drawing inspiration from the topographical, historical, biblical, cultural, political and environmental realms of the Dead Sea, she turns to the natural process of salt crystallization, exclusive to the Dead Sea, for her unique artistic techne. Baptizing profane objects in its waters, Landau relies on the Dead Sea to breathe life into inanimate objects, which emerge from their submersion as if belonging to a different time system, a different logic, or another planet yet their transformation unveils the divine and the eternal in nature.
Marking Landau's 15-year oeuvre and fascination with the Dead Sea, ‘Sigalit Landau: SALT YEARS’ sheds new light on the fundamental leitmotiv that underlies her multifaceted artistic creation. Offering insights to the artist's visions, this volume explores Landau's career reflecting the breadth of her oeuvre, including exclusive works of art created specifically for this book, behind the scenes photos, personal working notes and perceptive essays. It is an invitation to take part in the transformative power of art and Landau's transformation of the Dead Sea into a laboratory and medium for new experiments, ideas and heart/ground breaking understandings, revealing the death bearing to life sustaining alchemy of salt.
Surrealistic images by Erik Johannson
When photoshop is simply necessary
Everyone is used to the idea that Photoshop is bad, and graphic editors are associated with a wide variety of blunders and frank deception. But in the case of Eric Johansson's work, things are different. He uses photoshop to create surrealistic images, for each of which he spends from one to two days to several months: choosing a place for shooting, photographing and digital processing. As a result, these are realistic surreal masterpieces.
According to Johansson, he does not capture the elusive moments, but fixes the ideas. Thanks to this, he manages to realize the ideas born of an unrestrained fantasy. Drawing inspiration from everyday life, he creates multi-layered photo art, bringing them to the most realistic and integral state. Thus, each image becomes a full-fledged picture with a far-off pointless plot. Some compare his work with hallucinations, others - with puzzles, and still others do not fully understand what is so special about him. In any case everyone can find something interesting and unusual for himself.
And it is not necessary to try to find the truth every time, trying to get to the bottom of it, it's enough just to give free rein to your own imagination, which will instantly put everything in its place ...
RARE LEONARDO DA VINCI PAINTING SOLD FOR $450 MILLION DOLLARS
Just so you understand the importance of this event in the art world, the last time a Da Vinci was discovered was 1909.
The biggest discovery of the 21st century! Just so you understand the importance of this event in the art world, the last time a Da Vinci was discovered was 1909.
Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi (“Savior of the World”) , a 500 year old painting of Jesus Christ previously buried under layers of paint, just sold at Christie's auction for $450 million dollars. It ones belonged to King Charles I of England in the 1500s. Since then it had been painted over and was sold at Sotheby’s for £45 in 1958 ( We don't want to be that person right now) . It is the most expensive piece of artwork ever sold. The work is believed to be the last work of Da Vinci. Immediately following today’s press conference, the painting will tour the globe, appearing in Hong Kong, San Francisco, and London, and then will return to New York, where it will be put up for auction.
Leonardo Da Vinci, Salvator Mundi, c. 1500Photo: Courtesy of Christie’s
Architect Turns Old Cement Factory Into His Home
And it will take your breathe away
In 1973, Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill purchased a WWI-era cement factory near Barcelona.
He immediately saw potential in the building, and began renovating it into his home.
He stumbled upon a dilapidated cement factory in 1973 and soon after La fabrica was born. 45 years later, just outside of Barcelona, the structure has been transformed into a spectacular home.
Ricardo Bofill and his team decided to lace the exterior of the property with vegetation, and decorate the interior into the modern living work space. It is still in work progress today .
The industrial chimneys that once filled the air with smoke, now overflow with green. A great example of saving our planet and beautiful transformation from the artist and creative thinker.
