Picasso’s first Painting
His first major painting, an “academic” work is First Communion, featuring a portrait of his father, mother, and younger sister kneeling before an altar. Picasso was 15 when he finished it.
Archive for June, 2010
David LaChapelle’s return to fine art
The photographer known for his glossy, glamourised images reveals why he fell out of love with fashion and is now focusing on his art By William Oliver Over a 20-year career, David LaChapelle has carved a name for himself as an enfant terrible of pop culture photography. The cutting, acerbic wit and layered symbolism in his celebrity portraiture, fashion and advertising images is seen as a bolt of honesty—albeit a glamourised and high-gloss one—in an industry known for its false vision of reality. During the last few years, LaChapelle has moved away from commercial work to focus on fine art. While retaining his unique visual style, this new direction highlights his interest and understanding of both contemporary practice and art…
Archive of the painter Giorgio Vasari sold to a Russian company
Controversy surrounds €150m sale to Russian company, which officials think may not actually exist The Italian government has seized the archive of the painter and writer Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), sold to a Russian company late last year, because it does “not believe that the Moscow-based firm actually exists”, says the lawyer representing the archive owners. The move is the latest twist in a saga that began last autumn with the sale of the Vasari documents to the Russian conglomerate Ross Engineering for €150m. A contract was signed in September by the late owner of the archive, Giovanni Festari, and Vasilij Stepanov of Ross Engineering. However, questions were raised about the authenticity of the deal with sources in the Russian art…
Lucian Freud is rumoured to have up to 40 illegitimate children.
Personal life of Lucian Freud. Freud is rumoured to have up to 40 illegitimate children, although this number is generally accepted as an exaggeration. After an affair with Lorna Garman, he went on to marry her niece Kitty (daughter of sculptor Jacob Epstein and socialite Kathleen Garman) in 1948. After four years and the birth of two daughters, Annie and Annabel, their marriage ended. He had begun an affair with Lady Caroline Blackwood, a society girl and writer. They married in 1953. The marriage was dissolved in Mexico in 1958. Freud has children also by Bernardine Coverley (fashion designer Bella Freud and writer Esther Freud); Suzy Boyt (5 children: Ali, Rose Boyt, Isobel, and Susie Boyt); and Katherine Margaret McAdam…
Elegant Art Jokes: THE CATACOMBS OF EGYPT. Part3.
Denon observed everything with the eye of an artist. Speaking of the Necropolis, which consists of numerous double galleries of grottos, excavated in the solid rock for nearly a mile and a half square, he observes, “I was convinced by the magnificence both of the paintings and sculptures, that I was among the tombs of great men and heros. The sculpture in all is incomparably more labored and higher finished than any I had seen in the temples; and I stood in astonishment at the high perfection of the art, and its singular destiny to be devoted to places of such silence and obscurity. In working these galleries, beds of a very fine calcareous clay have occasionally been crossed, and…
Elegant Art Jokes: THE CATACOMBS OF EGYPT. Part2.
The grottos present externally no other ornaments than a door in a simple square frame, with an oval in the centre of the upper part, on which are inscribed the hieroglyphical figures of a beetle, a man with a hawk’s head, and beyond the circle two figures on their knees, in the act of adoration. Having passed the first gate, long arched galleries are discovered, about twelve feet wide and twenty feet high, cased with stucco, sculptured and painted; the vaults, of an elegant elliptical figure, are covered with innumerable hieroglyphics, disposed with so much taste, that notwithstanding the singular grotesqueness of the forms, and the total absence of demi-tint or aërial perspective, the ceilings make an agreeable whole, a…
Elegant Art Jokes: THE CATACOMBS OF EGYPT. Part1.
There are numerous catacombs in Egypt, the principal of which are at Alexandria; at Sakkara, near Cairo; at Siut, near the ancient Lycopolis or City of the Wolf; at Gebel Silsilis, on the banks of the Nile between Etfu and Ombos, the site of one of the principal quarries of ancient Egypt; and at Thebes. Many of these are of vast extent, and were doubtless formed by quarrying the rocks and mountains for building materials. They consist of grottos, galleries, and chambers, penetrating often to a considerable distance, the superincumbent mass being supported by huge pillars of rock; or the galleries running parallel, with masses of solid rock intervening for supports. Many of these chambers and grottos contained multitudes of…
Picasso’s First Job
Picasso signed his first contract in Paris with art dealer Pere Menach, who agreed to pay him 150 francs per month (about US$750 today).
Art Joke #44:) You Must Be An ARTIST If…
When others are needing to be with the in crowd, you feel lost in the crowd. By M.Boddy-Evans
Elegant Art Jokes: THE COLOSSAL SPHINX.
The Egyptian Sphinx is represented by a human head on the body of a lion; it is always in a recumbent position with the fore paws stretched forward, and a head dress resembling an old-fashioned wig. The features are like those of the ancient Egyptians, as represented on their monuments. The colossal Sphinx, near the group of pyramids at Jizeh, which lay half buried in the sand, was uncovered and measured by Caviglia. It is about 150 feet long, and 63 feet high. The body is made out of a single stone; but the paws, which are thrown out about fifty feet in front, are constructed of masonry. The Sphinx of Sais, formed of a block of red granite, twenty-two…