This week, Occupy art, Picasso abodes, an artist on Iraq, UK art blogs, lo-fi pics and working as a culture industry serf.
Pablo Picasso
Posted inArt
The Precious Gems Art History Forgot
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.
Posted inArt
The Best Matisse Room I’ve Ever Seen
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.
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
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.
Posted inOpinion
Not as Famous, or Lesser-known Relatives of Well-known Artists
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.
Posted inArt
An Appreciation of MoMA’s Miniature Picasso
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.
Posted inNews
Mystery Donor Gifts Pica$$o to Fund Science
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]
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
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.
Posted inOpinion
Watch Picasso Paint
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.
Posted inOpinion
Five Awesome Artist Studios
Until an artist version of Cribs is invented, the best way we can get inside an artist’s life and work is to get inside their studios. Photographs of artists in their studios are kind of like snapshots of an artistic career, a whole body of work compressed into a single room. A working and living space tells a lot about the person that inhabits it, and the spare objects and trashed drafts tossed around the room communicate eloquently about artists’ inner lives. I’ve collected some cool studio shots that all communicate something inexpressible about the artists they shelter.
Posted inOpinion
Picasso’s eBay Period
The Bygone Bureau’s Jimmy Chen imagines what it would be like if Picasso had used eBay. Hilarity ensues. Great line, “bitch i’m trying to make a living. check out my new painting.”
Posted inOpinion
Picasso Biographer Weighs In On Le Guennec Picassos
John Richardson, the art historian who has written (and is still writing) the definitive Picasso biography, has published his thought on Vanity Fair‘s website on the recently discovered Picassos in the possession of Pierre Le Guennec, Picasso’s electrician. He writes, “Picasso would never, in my opinion, have given away these works — so relevant to his early development — not even to his wife.” [Vanity Fair]
