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Louise Bourgeois, Influential Sculptor, Dies at 98

Louise Bourgeois, the French-born American artist who gained fame only late in a long career, when her psychologically charged abstract sculptures, drawings and prints had a galvanizing effect on the work of younger artists, particularly women, died on Monday in Manhattan, where she lived. She was 98.

Ms. Bourgeois’s sculptures in wood, steel, stone and cast rubber, often organic in form and sexually explicit, emotionally aggressive yet witty, covered many stylistic bases. But from first to last they shared a set of repeated themes centered on the human body and its need for nurture and protection in a frightening world.

via: The New York Times

Leon Golub: Live + Die like a Lion?

 

Leon Golub was at odds with the world and with himself for most of his long career. His contrarian, combative stance gives his work a ferocity that catches people off guard. Famous in the 1950s, when abstraction ruled the roost, for huge antiheroic canvases of gigantic warring figures, Golub reemerged in the neo-expressionist ’80s with stark muralsize tableaux of political violence in the shadows of the American empire. Unable to paint on such a scale during his last years, he drew prolifically instead. This exhibition features fifty-odd drawings he made between 1999 and his death in 2004. The harsh symbolic imagery, graphic nuances, and Brechtian “disgrace” notes of these late works are a startling coda to an ever-adversarial life.

— Robert Storr

Leon Golub: Live & Die Like a Lion - The Drawing Center

link: artforum 

'La Photographie N’est Pas L’art'

La Photographie N'est Pas L'art (“Photography is Not Ar”’) is a limited edition facsimile reprint of a book that was originally published by Guy Levis-Mano in France in 1937. The book is composed of twelve loose-leaf photographs within a portfolio style slipcase and includes a short, poetic text by the surrealist artist Andre Breton entitled ‘convulsionaires’. The collection is a conceptual work that encapsulates a wide range of subject matter including fashion, nature, architecture and portraiture. 

Flat Light Poster

designer:

Finn Magee

design year:

2007

materials:

printed poster; LED

notes:

Designer Finn Magee writes:

"Flat Light was the result of borrowing an Anglepoise task light from college. In 2007, I set up the lamp on my desk at home and was amazed at how it lent an atmosphere of productivity and efficiency to the room… I wondered if just an image of an ordinary task light would be enough to create this atmosphere. This led to Flat Light, which has been exhibited at the Royal College of Art Summer show in 2007 and as part of Designers in Residence at the Design Museum, London"

produced in a limited edition of 50 pieces

dimensions:

16.5" x 23.5"

price:

$195.00

Available at moss  

 

Avedon Town House on the Market

WHEN Olivier Sarkozy, the half-brother of President Sarkozy of France, bought the Upper East Side town house where Richard Avedon had lived and kept a studio for more than 30 years, he knew he had taken charge of a slice of American culture. Mr. Avedon’s fashion and portrait photographs had helped define the nation’s sense of style and beauty for decades.

Mr. Sarkozy, who goes by Oliver, bought the four-story house at 407 East 75th Street for $6.75 million and has just put it on the market for $11.95 million. The Sarkozys have already moved into a new home downtown.

The family essentially lived on the top three floors of the house and used the ground floor as entertaining space. In 2008, they used the studio to host Terence Koh’s exhibition, “Flowers for Baudelaire,” which consisted of 51 works using paint, corn syrup and powdered sugar.

“When Avedon’s relatives sold the house in 2005, they were hoping that it would have some artistic function,”said Michael Bolla, the director of sales at Luxury Lofts and Homes and the listing agent -- “and it seems like that happened.” 

via: The New York Times 

 

'...to walk without destination and to see only to see.'

Uta Barth at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

May 6, 2010 - June 19, 2010

“I Will Greet the Sun Again”

I will greet the sun again;

I will greet the streams which flowed in me;

I will greet the clouds which were

my lengthy thoughts;

I will greet the painful growth of poplars

Which pass through the dry seasons;

I will greet the flocks of crows

Which brought me, as presents,

The sweet smells of the fields at night;

I will greet my mother who lived in the mirror

And was the image of my old age;

And I will also greet the earth whose burning womb

Is filled with green seeds by the passion she has

For reproducing me.

I will come, I will come,

I will come with my hair,

As the continuation of the smells of the soil;

With my eyes, as the dense experiences of darkness,

Carrying the bushes I have picked in the woodlands

beyond the wall.

I will come, I will come,

I will come and the entrance will be filled with love;

And at the entrance I will greet again

those who are in love,

And also the girl who is still standing

At the entrance in diffusion of love.

 Forugh Farrokhzad

Image: Shirin Neshat 'I Am Its Secret'

via: Paper Cuts Blog - NYTimes.com 

"Two Gallery-goers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art"

Artist

Bruce Davidson (American, born 1933)

Date

1968

Medium

Gelatin silver print

via: Metropolitan Museum of Art 

 

Mourner no. 51

 
 In the mid-15th century,two French sculptors worked for years to complete the tomb of a deceased former duke of Burgandy, John the Fearless-including several detailed mourning figures, each about 15 inches tall. Today those statues are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

"The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculptures From the Court of Burgundy" is on view through May 23.

via:  Wall Street Journal

"Life on the Lower East Side: 1937-1950"

 

A young Rebecca Lepkoff, camera in hand, navigated the streets of the Lower East Side of New York in the 1930s and 1940s, before the Alfred E. Smith housing project largely demolished and forever changed its character. She captured the lives and times of a vibrant, close-knit, and functional multiethnic community. 

Life on the Lower East Side, the first monograph of Lepkoff's works, highlights the lost neighborhood between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges from the Bowery to the East River. With over 170 beautifully reproduced duotone photographs and essays by Peter Dans and Suzanne Wasserman, the book reveals the dynamic community of Italians, Irish, Jews, Greeks, Spaniards, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans. Lepkoff's images uncover a forgotten time and place and reveal how the Lower East Side has both stayed the same and changed forever.