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Roden Crater by James Turrell, under construction.
Kanye West has brought a lot of attention to light and space artist James Turrell whom he worked with and filmed Jesus is King at Turrell’s Roden Crater in Arizona. Roden Crater is expected to open to the public in 2024.
Artist/architect Paolo Soleri studied at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West and with the famous architect himself, although Soleri's designs took on a more amorphic and almost insect-like look about them. The photos were taken by me at a retrospective of the artist at The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in 2018.
Soleri and his students started making bronze bells as a source of income and an artistic outlet. The bells can still be purchased at Cosanti.
Architectural model for Arcosanti, Mayer, AZ
In Preparation, She Cached A Guidebook Near the River of Oblivion, 2008 by Holly Lane, Forum Gallery, Inc.
A working artist whose fantastic artwork is fit into her intricate hand-made frames. Her frame style is so rich and detailed, while her paintings have a distinctly surreal look. Lane was born in Cleveland and went to school in California.
Thanksgiving, 1935 by Doris Lee, Art Institute of Chicago.
The hardest part is getting it all hot and on the table at the same time.
Looking forward to celebrating with family today.
Thanksgiving by John Currin, 2003, The Tate Collection, London.
John Currin's artwork brings to mind the naturally lit rooms of Vermeer and the realistic, beautiful, yet often grotesque figures of Odd Nerdrum. What I see here are three women, obviously related, preparing a huge turkey for Thanksgiving, but the turkey is really the star. It is impossibly fat and huge, I have a hard time believing they will be able to fit it into an oven.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Freedom From Want, 1943 by Norman Rockwell,Saturday Evening PostCover
One of the Four Freedoms series inspired by a speech by Franklin Roosevelt:
In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look
forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression
-- everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his
own way -- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world
terms, means economic understandings which will secure to
every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants
-- everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into
world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments
to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation
will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression
against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite
basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and
generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of
the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators
seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
excerpted from the Annual Message to the Congress,
January 6, 1941
The Last Judgment, 1536-1541 by Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel, Vatican.
Michelangelo and the Vatican butted heads over the nudity in this colossal fresco of the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse. All of the souls are being judged and either ascending to heaven or falling down into hell. Some of the figures are coming to grips with their fates based on how they lived they lives.
Nymphea 'Bagdad,' 2006 by Leslie Berge, for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
A Florilegium is a collection of flora, most often garden flowers. The earliest known examples date to about the 15th century, but as you can see from this example, they continue to be produced in the present day. The Victorians were very fond of gardening and many Florilegia were produced in the 19th century.
The Florist and Pomologist. London: Journal of Horticulture Office, Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections.
Allegory of Spring by Guiseppe Arcimboldo, 1563, The Louvre, Paris.
Arcimboldo created some of the most fascinating paintings of the 16th century. He began his career making stained glass windows and eventually worked for royalty where he created portraits made of fruits, vegetables, flowers, leaves and even books.
Spring, detail
Egyptian Faience Hippo, Middle Kingdom Period, 3800 - 1710 BC.
Faience is a type of ceramic with a high concentration of quartz. When fired it turns a bright blue. While the Ancient Egyptians considered the male hippo very dangerous the female was thought to bring luck in maternity. The lotus flower and other plants that decorate the body represent the river where the hippo lives.
Also see William at the Met.
Laocoon and his Sons (or Laocoon Group), Greek Hellenistic (most likely 42 -20 BC), Vatican Museums, Rome.
Laocoon warning about the Trojan Horse earned him the wrath Poseidon who sent serpents to attack him and his sons. Michelangelo was influenced by this work and the contortions of the body of Laocoon can be seen in many of his works, especially something like the Dying Slave.
Dying Slave
, 1513-16 by Michelangelo, Louvre, Paris.
Nike of Samothrace or Winged Victory, Greek Hellenistic period (220-190 BC) The Louvre, Paris.
It is thought that this work was originally created to celebrate a naval victory. The dramatically flowing drapery on the figure as well as the wings lend credence to the idea that it was in honor of a naval battle for she stands in the prow of a ship.
Dying Gaul, Roman Copy from Greek Bronze, 230-220 BC.
The work was commissioned for the Altar at Pergamon and was commissioned by Attalus I in honor of the Roman victory over the Gauls. The enemy was depicted in a noble manner so it could be shown that they had defeated worthy adversaries.
Pity, c. 1795 by William Blake.
From Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act I, Scene VII when Macbeth what would happen after Duncan is murdered "And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air."
Blake's unique style developed from his training as an illustrator and his unbounded imagination.
The Mock Turtle's Story, 1907 illustrations by Arthur Rackham for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
...They had not gone far before they saw the Mock Turtle in the distance, sitting sad and lonely on a little ledge of rock, and, as they came nearer, Alice could hear him sighing as if his heart would break. She pitied him deeply. "What is his sorrow?" she asked the Gryphon, and the Gryphon answered, "very nearly in the same words as before, It's all his fancy, that: he hasn't got no sorrow, you know. Come on!"....
Cook’s Barn, 1939 by Marvin Cone.
A friend and fellow teacher of Grant Wood, when you look at Cone's work you can tell the two artists were working together and sharing techniques. He and Wood collaborated at the Stone City Art Colony.
Seated Woman with Bent Knee, 1917 by Egon Schiele
Schiele was arrested and imprisoned for immoral artwork. His work was often more explicit than this example; his work is raw and uncompromising. He died at 28 from influenza.
January by Jean and Paul Limbourg.
This is a page from one of the greatest surviving Illuminated Manuscripts. Manuscripts were small devotional books made for wealthy individual to use in their personal worship. This one was made for the Duc of Berry who wanted his life and his properties represented. The attention to detail in these small paintings by the Limbourg brothers is remarkable.
String of Puppies, 1988 by Jeff Koons, various collections.
Koons took this image off a card licensed by the photographer and reproduced it. He was sued and the court found that it was copyright infringement. Koons claimed it was an image of everyday life that he reproduced. More "fair use" info.
Cosmic Thing, 2003 by Damian Ortega,
Answering the question “What is Art?” is a big job.
I believe that it cannot be answered definitively and must be left up up to the individual.
Let me tell you about a personal experience of mine that related to this subject. I was in graduate school working on my masters degree in art history and working at my father's law office. He had occasion to need a definition of art, as a citizen of the town he represented, had taken it upon himself to hoist an old VW bug up on a stump in his yard. When asked to remove it by the local government, the citizen refused saying it was art and he had a right to display it. This caused my father to have to take the man to court to try and compel him to remove the car from the stump. The city was claiming it was not only and eyesore, but a danger.
My father's thought he could get his art historically educated daughter to define art for him, and surely this old car on a stump would not fall within that definition. Well, I told him I could not give him one definitive definition of what art was and that I was sorry, but in some people's eyes, a VW was art. He does not often become angry with me, but this time he did. I wanted to be able to solve his problem, but I knew I could not, as I feel it is an individual interpretation when it comes deciding what is and is not art.
In the end, it turned out the stump was on someone else's property and it was removed, but the question of whether or not it was art, is still not resolved.