Can a person own a color? Yves Klein may say yes, but Yves Saint Laurent begs to differ.
Pablo Picasso
This week, Occupy art, Picasso abodes, an artist on Iraq, UK art blogs, lo-fi pics and working as a culture industry serf.
Imagine strolling through clean, bright halls, surrounded by immaculate display cases filled with baubles and trinkets, the steam-polished precious metals and gems coruscating in the glare of spotlights. Hear your feet clacking on the white floors, stopping to look closer at the jewelry on display, but not close enough to stir the ire of the security guard peering over your shoulder. Imagine wanting everything you see, from diamond diadems to neon-tubed necklaces. No, you’re not in Tiffany’s or Cartier, you’re in the Museum of Arts and Design, gazing at their new show, Picasso to Koons: The Artist as Jeweler.
Among the surprises at the Statens Museum for Kunst, National Gallery of Denmark, is an exquisite room of early Matisses that will blow your mind.
This week’s edition of Required Reading comes a little later than usual, but aren’t all good things worth the wait? We’ll be back to our morning publishing schedule next Sunday. Enjoy the linkage.
Dik F. Liu is a Williamsburg-based artist who has compiled a fascinating list on his Facebook profile page of what he has termed the “Not as Famous – Lesser known relatives of well-known artists.” He has allowed us to publish a number of the gems he’s found. Love triangles, same-sex spouses, illegitimate children, there’s a lot of juicy stuff here.
Walking through the Museum of Modern Art’s modern galleries the other day, I happened upon a small painting that’s about as powerful a work as any I’ve ever seen in the museum, and maybe my favorite object in the collection. Surprisingly, this mini work is actually a Picasso, and even at 6 1/4 by 4 3/8 inches is a tour de force of brushstroke, color and composition. Created in 1921 during Picasso’s classical period, this bathing woman is monumental even in the smallest of frames.
A vibrant Picasso painting, which has not been seen in public for six decades, was donated by an anonymous American under the condition that the University of Sydney sell the work to fund scientific research. [BBC]
This week… Ai Weiwei Easter egg, Picasso & Marie-Thérèse, camera obscura, LACMA acquisitions, John Berger’s new book, thoughts on criticism and Mummers in Newfoundland.
When I was 13, I got my entrance into modern art through a book that explored the development of modernism artist by artist and piece by piece. My favorite artist from that book? Pablo Picasso, of course. That early art-viewing experience still makes it inspiring to watch the artist paint in this video, a cut from the 1950 documentary Visit to Picasso.
