Sunday, May 8, 2011
Anniversary
Today marks one year since my first post here at Art Contrarian.
For a while I cross-posted material at 2Blowhards.com. But eventually Ray Sawhill, after some consultation with me and perhaps other interested parties, decided to close it down as an active site; it's still on the Internet, but new posting has ceased.
I started Art Contrarian figuring that I couldn't maintain 2Blowhards by myself, and that the blog had lost its zip when Ray "retired" from it. I made two formative decisions regarding the new blog. First, I wanted to keep politics out of it as much as possible (though I knew this would reduce commentary considerably). Second, I wanted to reduce posting to a level that I could manage without it dominating my real life. The result is a Monday-Wednesday-Friday posting schedule, though most posts are written about a week in advance and stockpiled for later release.
I'm pleased with the results. Especially pleased that readership has increased about eightfold since the early months. Thank you for visiting: I appreciate your interest in what's going on here.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Jaguar C-Type: When Race Cars Looked Like Cars
Once upon a time that ended in the late 1960s, road-racing cars looked somewhat like something one could buy from a dealer and drive away on the streets. I'll set aside so-called stock car racers and not even consider Formula types and deal with Le Mans type racers. (Here is a link containing further links to winners of the Les Vingt-Quatre Heures du Mans; click on those links to view photos of some of the winners.)
Above is a Porsche 917, the type that won Le Mans in 1970. It marks the start of Le Mans winners shaped unlike anything one is likely to drive on a street aside from a rare "supercar" -- an extremely low-production sports machine costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One of the nicest-looking winners in the post - World War 2 period was the Jaguar C-Type that won in 1951 and 1953. I'm not sure that racing C-Types were street-legal, but it's easy to see that a street version could be built with suitable additions and deletions that wouldn't change its appearance much.
Below are two photos of the beauty. The first shows it in action, the second is of a restored or perhaps replica version.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Barnes & Noble's Mural Guy
Walk into a typical Barnes & Noble bookstore in the USA, seek out the Starbucks coffee shop area and you're likely to see a printed mural filled with images of authors -- images that lurk in a gray area between caricature and portraiture. I find them interesting and will gaze at them from time to time while sipping my coffee and scribbling blog post subject ideas on a paper napkin.
I've been curious who created the murals, but my habitual sloth held me back until now. Some Googling revealed the artist to be Gary Kelley, an apparent hardcore Iowan who got his art degree from the University of Northern Iowa (located in Cedar Falls, which is right by Waterloo) in 1968 and lives in Cedar Falls. This might sound provincial, yet Kelley has carved out a successful career as an illustrator without having to spend his life in the likes of Chicago or New York.
Kelley's web site is here and a biographic sketch from a local art gallery is
here.
Below are examples of his work. His range is broader than shown, so check out his web site for more.
Gallery
I suppose some folks might carp because Kelley tends to favor the bon-ton over the proletariat. But it doesn't bother me, as I'll explain in a forthcoming post.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Jack Vettriano Redux, Sort Of
The painting at the top is "Only the Deepest Red I" by Scottish painter Jack Vettriano (1951 - ), the other is by Californian R. Kenton Nelson (1954 - ). As I'll try to show in this post, the artists have a good deal of overlap, though it's far from complete.
Vettriano's website is here. Information on Nelson can be found here and
here, though it is less comprehensive.
Similarities? As you can see by their birth dates, they are near-contemporaries. Some of their paintings are filled with warm tones. There is a tendency to poster-like simplicity. They like to portray pretty women.
As for differences, Vettriano is self-taught whereas Nelson had formal art training. Nelson usually paints pleasant scenes while Vettriano often deals with demimonde sexually-related subjects, particularly in his later work. Finally, as best I can tell, Vettriano makes a lot more money from his art than does Nelson.
I've never seen neither a Vettriano nor a Nelson in person, so I dare not compare further. But you can look at the sample below and draw conclusions if you like.
Gallery
The images above are by Nelson. I don't have titles. Below are some by Vettriano.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Winnowing Art Books
Their time has nearly come. They lay stacked atop chairs and book cases, even tucked away in corners on the floor. Soon they will be gone. For my wife is making grumbling noises and even I can see that the book buildup in the small bedroom I use as a library / painting studio is too large even for my taste in messiness.
I know what to do; the important matter is how. Which books stay and which head for Powell's in Portland?
Keepers include references such as general art histories, potted artists' biographies and short takes on art movements. I'll hang on to most monographs about artists, particularly those I really like. Ditto similar books about architecture and industrial design.
Then there are some gray-area books. These are books I can't make up my mind about; more time is needed before I can make a stronger save / sell decision.
Books I'm discarding? Those dealing with periods of less interest are prime candidates; that means before the mid-1800s. There are exceptions, of course: Tiepolo, Velázquez and British portrait painters starting with Reynolds come to mind.
Then there are redundant books about given subjects. For instance, I have more then one book about Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Symbolism, Impressionism, skyscraper architecture, Alphonse Mucha, Tamara de Lempicka, Gustav Klimt, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Joseph Urban, Raymond Loewy, Maxfield Parrish, Tiepolo, Velázquez, Norman Rockwell, John Singer Sargent and several other people and topics. Assuming overlap in illustration subject-matter, my inclination here is to discard older works because the quality of color reproduction usually isn't as good as it has been more recently.
I'm also getting rid of books that I'm not likely to re-read. Examples here include group biographies of Surrealists and Paris Bohemians as well as those about individuals such as N.C. Wyeth and Harvey Dinnerstein.
How-to books about painting that I seldom refer to are due for the axe too.
It's somewhat easier to discard books than it was 20 years and more ago. That was when there was no Internet and getting to a library to find reference material was a hassle. I found it easier to maintain my own library where what I might need would be at hand. Nowadays I find myself downloading images and using Google and Bing to track down information about artists and movements, so even those general reference books might disappear the next time I do housecleaning.
All well and good, I suppose. But the best solution (from my perspective) is to have enough space that I don't need to get rid of so many books so often. Or at all.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Molti Ritratti: Ambroise Vollard
Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) was an art dealer and writer who championed key Modernists during their emergence in the early 20th century.
In return, a number of artists painted his portrait. Below are some examples arranged in rough chronological order.
Gallery
Monday, April 25, 2011
World Trade Center in Miniature: Still Standing
The 10th anniversary of the destruction of New York City's World Trade Center is coming in a few months. Since this is an art and design blog, I thought it might be worthwhile to mention the WTC's architect, Minoru Yamasaki (1912-1986). His Wikipedia entry is here, and contains a long list of the buildings he designed. For a more detailed biography, however, click here -- though be warned it's a bit Seattle-centric.
Yamasaki, like his near-contemporary Edward Durell Stone, could not quite come to terms with International Style architecture and resorted to applying touches of decoration. That decoration usually had an industrial, cookie-cutter repetition to it -- perhaps an early Postmodern wink-and-nudge that the decoration wasn't (or maybe really was) serious; perhaps there's a justification for ambiguity.
The World Trade Center design didn't appear from a void. A structural prototype of sorts was built in Yamasaki's home town, Seattle, a few years earlier and some design themes were tested there too. Let's take a look.
Gallery
The towers were so huge and surrounded by other buildings that a comprehensive take isn't possible from photography. At the top is an aerial image that corresponds to what many of us have in mind when the WTC is mentioned. But the structures weren't all just narrow windows flanked by vertical strips; at the base some of those strips merged into Gothic-like pointed arches, as can be seen in the photo immediately above.
Century 21, Seattle's 1962 international exposition, included a work by Yamasaki -- a cluster of structures now named the Pacific Science Center. The best-known feature is the Gothic towers shown here.
For our purposes, the base detailing is of most interest. Note the similarity to the Trade Center street-level two photos up. No, the detailing isn't identical, but the spirit is consistent.
Apologies for the poor image, but it was the best I could grab off the Web showing the entire building. My understanding is that structural ideas used in the WTC were first developed for the IBM building. Some of this is apparent in the similar window treatment. The only superficial differences of note are the use of rounded, rather than pointed, arches at the bottom and the lack of elevator lobby breaks. Seattle's IBM Building still stands, though it's now overshadowed by larger structures nearby.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)