Frida Kahlo

Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954) was renowned for her self-portraits, and developed a style that infused Mexican and Amerindian cultural elements with surrealism and symbolism. As the above quotation implies, Kahlo experienced many... hardships in her life. At the age of six she contracted polio, which left her right leg physically deformed; as a teenager, she was in a trolley accident that left her lifelong back problems. Kahlo spent significant time in the hospital, and was notoriously irritable. However, her temperamental issues made her a fierce opponent when defending her ideologies.

The beliefs to which Kahlo held fast were the motivations of the Mexican Revolution, and Trotsky’s communist ideal—the latter had an effect on Kahlo seeing herself as an outsider, and the former had a strong influence on her aesthetic. Characterized by populist and agrarianist movements, the Mexican Revolution piqued Kahlo’s interest in the preservation of pre-Columbian and Mexican peasant traditions. For many posthumous years, she was better known as “Diego Rivera’s wife” than for her painting. But in the 1980s, Kahlo’s place in Mexican art history was recognized, and her work regained attention for its celebration of Mexican traditions.

Her work has also been described as "surrealist", and in 1938 André Breton, principal initiator of the surrealist movement, described Kahlo's art as a "ribbon around a bomb".^[7]

Her volatile marriage with the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera and lifelong health problems, many of which derived from the accident she experienced as a teenager are represented in her works, many of which are self-portraits of one sort or another. Kahlo suggested, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best." She also stated, "I was born a bitch. I was born a painter."

One of the most influential and innovative artists of the 20th century, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887 – 1986) is best known for the enormous close-ups of flowers which make up a significant percentage of her work. O’Keefe believed that true artist...ic meaning was only achieved through selection, elimination, and emphasis of specific details; her fantastically magnified flowers dominate the canvas. “Black and Purple Petunias”, painted in 1925, was among the first of O’Keefe’s trademark series of flower paintings. 



Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists were well known or highly celebrated. Within a decade, she had distinguished herself as one of America's most important modern artists, a position she maintained throughout her life. As a result, O’Keeffe not only carved out a significant place for women painters in an area of the American art community that had been exclusive to and is still dominated by men, but she also became one of America’s most celebrated cultural icons well before her death at age 98 in 1986.

Her abstract imagery of the 1910s and early 1920s is among the most innovative of any work produced in the period by American artists. She revolutionized the tradition of flower painting in the 1920s by making large-format paintings of enlarged blossoms, presenting them close up as if seen through a magnifying lens.

Links to AP Portfolio Samples

Click on the following links to see exemplary pieces created by former AP Studio Art students. Look at level of the work, read the rational for the score, and for the concentration read the Student Commentary. The work was scored according to the scoring rubric, which you should have. If you don't have it you will find the scoring criteria on the blog page that corresponds with the type of portfolio you are creating.

Scroll down to find  links to examples of Quality, Concentration and Breadth then click on samples from different years.

2D Design Portfolio:  

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/exam/exam_information/2134.html#name2

Drawing Portfolio: 

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/exam/exam_information/2182.html

3D Design Portfolio: 

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/exam/exam_information/2135.html

Vincent Van Gogh - Post Impressionism

 Vincent Van Gogh (1853 – 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist Master whose innovative artwork powerfully influenced modern Expressionism, Fauvism, and early abstraction. Astoundingly prolific, Van Gogh produced all of his work during a 10-y...ear period, at one point, creating 150 paintings and drawings within one year. Painting outdoors, Van Gogh uniquely captured the nighttime nuances of light and shadow, and was also renowned for his paintings of sunflowers and irises. Tormented by mental illness for most of his life, Van Gogh created many of his masterpieces while he was institutionalized. Although Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime, he is now regarded as one of the most profoundly influential artists of the 19th century. Van Gogh's tumultuous friendship with Paul Gauguin literally changed art history. After living together in Arles, France, art historians believe Gauguin sliced off Vincent's ear with a sword - an act previously believed to have been performed by van Gogh himself in a fit of rage.

Vincent Van Gogh painted many trees during his short career—cypresses, mulberry and olive trees. At his own request, Van Gogh (1853 – 1890) lived in an asylum in Saint-Rémy from 1889-90, ...and while there, he completed many landscapes featuring trees. Both cypresses and olive trees were plentiful in the region, and he found each compelling for different reasons. Olive trees were representative of Provence, and, according to a letter written to his brother, they presented Van Gogh with a challenge: “They are old silver, sometimes with more blue in them, sometimes greenish, bronzed, fading white above a soil which is yellow, pink, violet tinted orange...very difficult."

After painting several compositions with cypresses, Van Gogh expanded the series at his sister Wil’s request. With these depictions of cypress trees, Van Gogh developed a method of instilling landscapes with an ethereal tone through the use of thick impasto and swirling strokes. The same frenetic brushstrokes are applied to the mulberry tree here, and they give the viewer a great sense for the movement Van Gogh saw while painting the tree.

Apple Logo Turned Into Touching Tribute to Steve Jobs

This touching logo tribute, simply named “Thanks, Steve.” was created by Jonathan Mak Long, a 19-year-old designer living in Hong Kong. Jobs’ face appears to be taken from the cover of ‘Inside Steve’s Brain’, a book about Steve Jobs written by Leander Kahney.



http://www.demilked.com/tribute-apple-logo-to-steve-jobs/

Famous Paintings: Starry Night - Posted by Susan Benford

Vincent van Gogh.  The Starry Night, June 1889.  Oil on canvas, 29" x 36 1/4".  Acquired through Lillie P. Bliss Request.  Museum of Modern Art, NY.

 

Among the most famous paintings in Western art history, The Starry Night by van Gogh is a bit intimidating: it has Mona-Lisa-like recognizability, is the most famous of van Gogh paintings, and was created by an artist who, more than any other, epitomizes the tortured artist-genius-loner stereotype.  

None other than the late Thomas Hoving, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1967-1977, reacted to the public perception of van Gogh:

There is more bunk written and believed about van Gogh than any other painter of recent times. (1)
The "bunk", according to Hoving, was spawned by the 1956 Oscar-winning movie, Lust for Life, based on Irving Stone's fictionalized account of van Gogh's life.


Hoving challenges two prevalent van Gogh stories:

1. that he sold only one painting, Red Vineyard in Arles, during his lifetime. Hoving counters that van Gogh paintings did sell, so successfully, in fact, that some were forged while van Gogh was alive; and
   
2. that van Gogh committed suicide. Hoving argues that van Gogh accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun.
   

I'm mystified how and why Hollywood's version of van Gogh is more widely accepted than the truth (assuming Hoving is right, but I'm not one to bet against a past Met Director). Regardless of fact or fiction about van Gogh, Starry Night is a masterpiece, a true wonder even among famous paintings.

Vincent van Gogh.  Self-Portrait, 1889.  Oil on canvas, 25 1/2" x 21 1/4".  Musee d'Orsay, Paris.

Why? Because in it, van Gogh has captured the vastness of the universe.

Starry Night pulsates with energy and opposites: it could as easily portray the creation of the world as its pending demise.
It has chaos in the skies and calmness in the village; it has roiling of the Milky Way and stillness of an imaginary town.
The cypress trees bridge the earthly and heavenly worlds.
There's so much movement in this van Gogh sky that you verge on vertigo when seeing it on site.

Anyone aspiring to be a painter should pay homage to Starry Night - as might anyone who doesn't know how powerful a masterpiece painting can be.


Explore other famous paintings by van Gogh from our archives, including Potato Eaters and van Gogh paintings at the Hermitage.
1. Greatest Works of Art of Western Civilization.  Thomas Hoving, page 259.

Tags: van gogh, starry night, van gogh paintings

Georgia O'Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz

Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare 
Book and Manuscript Library Alfred Stieglitz attached 
this photograph to a letter or Georgia O'Keeffe, 
dated July 10, 1929.  Below the photograph he wrote, 
"I have destroyed 300 prints to-day. And much more literature. 
I haven't the heart to destroy this..."

From 1915 until 1946, some 25,000 pieces of paper were exchanged between two major 20th-century artists. Painter Georgia O'Keeffe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz wrote each other letters — sometimes two and three a day, some of them 40 pages long. The correspondence tracks their relationship from acquaintances to admirers to lovers to man and wife to exasperated — but still together — long-marrieds.

The first volume of those letters has just been published. My Faraway One, edited by Sarah Greenough, features 700-plus pages of the couple's correspondence, sent between 1915 and 1933.

When Stieglitz and O'Keeffe met in 1916, he was 52 and famous — an internationally acclaimed photographer, with an avant-garde gallery in Manhattan. She, on the other hand, was 28 and unknown.

"Stieglitz was the most important person in the New York art world," explains Greenough, head of the photography department at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. "And O'Keeffe was a schoolteacher" — teaching art in Texas.

I'm getting to like you so tremendously that it some times scares me.

- Georgia O'Keeffe, 1916

The couple's correspondence — O'Keeffe's in sweeping squiggles and curlicues; Stieglitz in thick, decisive slanting black lines — cascaded over the years as their relationship deepened.

"I'm getting to like you so tremendously that it some times scares me," O'Keeffe writes from Canyon, Texas, on Nov. 4, 1916. " ... Having told you so much of me — more than anyone else I know — could anything else follow but that I should want you — "

Yale Collection of American Literature, 
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Letter by Alfred Stieglitz, Nov. 4, 1916.

 Stieglitz becomes her guide and mentor. He exhibits her work in his gallery, and, unannounced, O'Keeffe visits him in New York. As she's about to return to Texas, Stieglitz writes to her on June, 1, 1917: "How I wanted to photograph you — the hands — the mouth — & eyes — & the enveloped in black body — the touch of white — & the throat — but I didn't want to break into your time — "

He's beginning to yearn. Miserable in his first marriage, he starts to see her not as O'Keeffe the artist, but as O'Keeffe the woman. Years later, he will photograph her — with what she described as "a kind of heat."

"Stieglitz was an immensely charismatic person, amazingly egotistical and narcissistic," Greenough says, "but he had this ability to establish a deep communion with people."

All I want is to preserve that wonderful something which so purely exists between us.

- Alfred Stieglitz, 1918

O'Keeffe decides to move to New York, and before she arrives, Stieglitz writes to her on May 26, 1918: "What do I want from you? — ... Sometimes I feel I'm going stark mad — That I ought to say — Dearest — You are so much to me that you must not come near me — Coming may bring you darkness instead of light — And it's in Everlasting light that you should live."

Yale Collection of American Literature, 
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Letter by Georgia O'Keeffe, Nov. 12, 1916.

Stieglitz worries that he won't be able to provide for her. He has no head for business. Still, eagerly, he gets a small studio cleaned and aired for her, and writes: "All I want is to preserve that wonderful something which so purely exists between us."

O'Keeffe comes to New York, and she and Stieglitz begin living together almost immediately. They marry in 1924. "They were entranced — passionately in love," Greenough says. "And yet by the mid-'20s, difficulties start creeping into the relationship; you can see the cracks in the relationship."

O'Keefe deeply wants to have a child, and Stieglitz does not, Greenough explains. The couple lives with Stieglitz's family, which proves difficult for O'Keeffe. They spend every summer at Lake George in New York with the Stieglitz family, "and that family very much intruded on O'Keeffe's time to paint," Greenough says.

O'Keeffe becomes a famous artist — thanks in large part to Steiglitz's promotion of her. She grows increasingly restless and, according to Greenough, starts making little trips. In the summer of 1929, she decides to go to New Mexico — a seminal decision that will forever change their lives.

"This really isn't like anything you ever saw — and no one who tells you about it gives any idea of it," she writes to Stieglitz from Taos, N.M., on May 2, 1929.

Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: 1915-1933

"She is so happy," Greenough says of O'Keeffe, who was staying with Mable Dodge Luhan, a woman who liked to surround herself with famous artists and writers.

"Mabel's place beats anything you can imagine about it — it is simply astonishing," O'Keeffe writes. "... The drive up here — seventy-five miles — was wonderful — It is bedtime and I am not a bit sleepy — not even tired — I lay in the sun a long time this afternoon — the air is cold and the wind — but the sun is hot — "

O'Keeffe, now 42, is coming alive in New Mexico. She finds the subjects and colors that will place her work in every major museum. Her letters are full of adventures and sunshine. Back in New York, Stieglitz, now 65, falls apart. "I am broken," he writes, desperate that he has lost her and will never get her back.

After two months in Taos, O'Keeffe explains her time away in a letter dated July 9, 1929: There is much life in me — when it was always checked in moving toward you — I realized it would die if it could not move toward something ... I chose coming away because here at least I feel good — and it makes me feel I am growing very tall and straight inside — and very still — Maybe you will not love me for it — but for me it seems to be the best thing I can do for you — I hope this letter carries no hurt to you — It is the last thing I want to do in the world.

Today it rains —

"This letter to me seems to express what any modern woman feels," Greenough says, "trying to reconcile the desires for work, their art, with a marriage."

A very modern marriage, which lasts — with changes, variations, temptations, an infidelity and, of course, letters — until Stieglitz dies in 1946. Throughout, each groped for personal and professional fulfillment — and achieved so much. The relationship, from 1915 to 1933, is traced in Volume 1 of My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz.

Summer Assignments

Hi AP Studio Art Students for the 2011 - 2012 school year. Let me know how the summer assignments are going. If you have any questions remember you can email me any time. I hope you are all enjoying your summer.

Ms. Haas

A Spirited Celebration Of America's 'Cocktail Culture'

by Jacki Lyden

As you enter Cocktail Culture, an intoxicating exhibit of apparel, accoutrement and ephemera at the Rhode Island School of Design's Museum of Art, it's hard not to think of Billy Strayhorn's lyrics in his jazz standard "Lush Life": I used to visit all those very gay places those come-what-may places where one relaxes on the axis of wheel of life to get the feel of life from jazz and cocktails.

The show features more than 200 objects, including nearly 60 dresses owned by the museum. There are stunning dresses by French designers Givenchy, Trigere and Dior, Americans Norman Norell and Elizabeth Hawes, and a collection of whimsical '20s flapper dresses in glass bugle beads. Some of them are local creations, made by Providence-based designers (and sisters) Anna and Laura Tirocchi. There are 12 drop-dead Swarovski crystal necklaces and brooches which look like Greta Garbo just took them off. (Swarovski sponsored this exhibit.)

Lillian Bassman/Harper's Bazaar Lillian Bassman's photograph The V‐Back Evenings shows model and actress Suzy Parker having a drink (and some fun) in 1955.

The exhibit feels like an elegant and witty party that can be followed over six decades, from 1920 to 1980. You can almost hear the chatter. Think of it this way, say Kate Irvin and Laurie Brewer, both curators with the museum's Costumes and Textile Department. Cocktails — the word might be from the docked tail of a certain kind of show horse — are about mixing. Which, during Prohibition, was necessary to cover up the awful taste of bathtub gin.

"There's the mixing of genders, the mixing of time periods," says Irvin. "In the 19th century, men drank alone in saloons or stashed a bottle of spirits at home. That changed with Prohibition in 1919, when men and women went indoors to drink together in elegant apartments or clandestine speakeasies. By the time Prohibition ended in 1933, women had the vote, and the modern woman emerged — cocktail in hand."

That means the masculine and the feminine have to be balanced in an exhibit about cocktail culture. The curators do this with film clips, posters and of course — barware. Matthew Bird, an industrial design teacher at RISD, discussed this in a talk for the museum in April.

Museum Of Art/Rhode Island School of Design Norman Bel Geddes' 1934 "Manhattan Cocktail Service" evokes a tall, city skyscraper.

Bird pointed to an iconic set of shaker and glasses called the "Manhattan Cocktail Service," designed in 1934 by Norman Bel Geddes — it's at the entrance of the exhibit. "Geddes," Bird explained, "knew how to attach the ways things looked to what they did." (In 1945, Bel Geddes would go on to design a flying car that actually worked.) "Here he is at the beginning of his career ... [designing] a tall cylindrical shaker and eight cups that, when placed on the accompanying tray from Revere, looks like a tall building." The silhouette of the shaker and cups suggests a cityscape like Rockefeller Center. It's a handsome set of chrome-plated brass, with one flaw, Bird says. "Everyone wanted the shaker and tray, but no one wanted the chrome cups."

But they did want the style. Actor William Powell was a man who knew how to mix a cocktail in style, both on screen and off. In the 1934 film The Thin Man, Powell hoists a chrome shaker as three waiters in white jackets and bow ties look on.

Museum Of Art/Rhode Island School of Design A cocktail hat circa 1963 by Cristobal Balenciaga. Silk, tulle, feathers, plastic, satin weave.

"The important thing is the rhythm," he drawls, in his urbane, slightly sauced way. His tuxedo is impeccable. "Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now, a Manhattan you shake to a foxtrot. A Bronx, to two-step time. A dry martini you always shake to waltz time." Powell then samples his signature drink, the dry martini. It's pure elan, pure chemistry.

Elan and chemistry fizz together in the exhibit. From the amazing cocktail bags women placed on the bar to "mark" their territory to eye-catching hats to hand-painted Mexican resort wear (designed for an era of ease in say, 1950s Acapulco), Cocktail Culture reminds us of how much Americans enjoy ritual — particularly ritual that allows us to mix fantasy and pleasure. (It's worth noting in this time of anxiety.)

A brief mention here for Joanne Dolan Ingersoll, a curator who was an originator of the show and a guiding force for the exhibit. Ingersoll is no longer with the museum, but she wrote several of the essays in the Cocktail Culture catalog. "The cocktail is not just a drink," she writes, "not just spirits combined with a mixer, but a spectacle, a symbol of American joie de vivre, prosperity, youth and unity."

The martini glass and the little black dress may anchor this exhibit, but it needs just one thing more. You. The stage is set, the lights low, the drinks poured. Shaken or stirred?

Cocktail Culture: Ritual and Invention in American Fashion, 1920–1980 will be on display at the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, R.I., until July 31.

Is That Nat Geo Photo ... A Painting?

Frans Lanting/National Geographic

Tinted orange by the morning sun, a soaring dune is the backdrop for the hulks of camel thorn trees in Namib-Naukluft Park.

 

 

 

 

I can't quite put a finger on what this reminds me of — other than something someone would paint. But it is, in fact, a photo, taken in Namibia by Frans Lanting for a story in National Geographic's June issue.

Lanting explains how he did it in a Nat Geo Q&A:

    It was made at dawn when the warm light of the morning sun was illuminating a huge red sand dune dotted with white grasses while the white floor of the clay pan was still in shade. It looks blue because it reflects the color of the sky above. ... The perfect moment came when the sun reached all the way down to the bottom of the sand dune just before it reached the desert floor. I used a long telephoto lens and stopped it all the way down to compress the perspective.


Here's what the scene looks like from a wider vantage point.

Tape London at Design Museum
by Design Museum plus




Tape London









Timelapse from the Brit Insurance Design Awards ceremony on Tuesday 15 March 2011. Artists Christoph Katzler, Ante Krizmanic and Nikola Radeljkovic from Numen/For Use used 156 rolls of sticky tape to construct a one-day installation as a backdrop for the ceremony at the museum.

Film by Luke Hayes
lukehayes.com 

Tape Vienna

Hudson River School - Albert Bierstadt

Born in Germany, Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) was two years old when his family emigrated to America. Though he returned to his homeland to study painting and began establishing his reputation as a landscape painter with European scenes, Bierstadt became internationally renowned for his paintings of the unsettled American West.

A second generation member of The Hudson River School, Bierstadt initially made sketching trips to the White Mountains and Newport in New England, but beginning in 1859, he made three trips west, each time making oil sketches which he used as the basis for often large scaled panoramic views of Western scenery. Bierstadt created luminous, detailed but romanticized paintings that interpreted the American wilderness as a manifestation of the sublime. His works found their way into public and private collections at staggeringly high prices for his time, but as the nineteenth century drew to a close, interest in his work waned, eventually forcing him into bankruptcy. Time, however, has renewed interest in Bierstadt’s art, and he is now regarded as one of the greatest landscape artists in history.

Alexander McQueen

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art


Alexander McQueen (British, 1969–2010) was one of fashion’s most influential, imaginative, and inspiring designers at the turn of the millennium. In landmark collections presented over a prolific 19-year career, he challenged and expanded our understanding of clothing beyond utility to a conceptual expression of culture, politics, and identity. Trained in Savile Row, he produced iconic silhouettes—the crinoline, the pannier, the corset—while subverting traditional tailoring and dressmaking practices. His astonishing and extravagant runway presentations suggested avant-garde installation and performance art. Among his recurring themes and narrative concepts were Victorian England and the Byronic anti-hero as well as the dark undercurrents of nature. Whether they showcase skulls, tartan plaids, reptile skin, butterflies, or feathers, McQueen’s extraordinary creations celebrate his deep engagement with the sublime. Our Armadillo Shoe figurine was expressly made for the exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and adapts one of McQueen’s most avant-garde designs. 
 

Dress
VOSS, spring/summer 2001
Red and black ostrich feathers and glass medical slides painted red
Courtesy of Alexander McQueen 

 In Mc Queen's Words
"There's blood beneath every layer of skin" - The Observer Magazine, October 7, 2011

Andrew Bolton: This particular dress came from a collection called VOSS, which was all about beauty. And I think one of McQueen’s greatest legacies was how he would challenge normative conventions of beauty and challenge your expectations of beauty—what we mean by beauty. This particular one is made out of ostrich feathers dyed red. And the glass slides are actually microscope slides that have been painted red to give the idea of blood underneath. And there’s a wonderful quote in association with this dress, where he talks about how there’s blood beneath every layer of skin. And it’s an incredible, again, very powerful, powerful piece.

UPDATED: Ai Weiwei’s Zodiac Unveiled, Mayor Bloomberg Applauds Artist’s Courage 

by Kyle Chayka on May 4, 2011 

Today’s rain may have put a damper on the unveiling of Ai Weiwei‘s “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads” (2009) at the Pulitzer Fountain, located at Central Park South and Fifth Avenue, but what certainly cast a pall over the event was the artist’s own absence. After over a month since his arrest by the Chinese government, we still haven’t heard from the dissident artist. The opening of “Zodiac Heads” was met with widespread support for Ai’s plight and for his politically contentious work, both from Mayor Bloomberg and the city’s influential arts community.

This is the first time that public art has been installed at the Pulitzer Fountain outside the Plaza Hotel, and Ai’s work is particularly well-suited to the space. The Zodiac heads range around the wide fountain pool in a single curved line; from the front, a confrontational group, up close, masterpieces of expressive sculpture. Each head belongs to a different animal in the Chinese Zodiac, and each is imbued with its own distinctive personality. What is most imposing about these sculptures is their massive quality; each weighs up to half a ton. But it’s the animals’ expressions that really drive the heavy, surreal feeling of the works home. Blank eyes stare out at viewers, mouths and snouts twist into manic grins.
After a slight delay spent standing outside in the rain, the unveiling began in earnest with the arrival of Mayor Bloomberg. In an introductory speech that was appreciative of both the Zodiac heads and the artist who created them, Bloomberg spoke out against Ai’s continued detention and the restriction of free speech in China:

Artists risk everything to create. They risk failure. They risk rejection. They risk public criticism. But artists like Ai Weiwei, who come from places that do not value and protect free speech, risk even more than that … His willingness to take those risks, and face the consequences, speaks not only to his courage, but also to the indomitable desire for freedom that is inside every human being.

As Ai spent over a decade living in New York and has been a constant visitor ever since, Bloomberg went to lengths to claim Ai as one of the city’s own. After a speech from Larry Warsh, the founder of AW Asia, who helped produce the exhibition, Bloomberg introduced a group of 12 significant New York City cultural figures, including track-suited artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel, Iranian artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat (and her ever-present eye shadow), choreographer Bill T. Jones and Agnes Gund, the Museum of Modern Art’s president emerita.

Ai Weiwei's Artwork Travels, Despite Detainment
 by Laura Sydell

Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei was awarded the Chinese 

Contemporary Art Award for Lifetime Contribution in 2008. He was taken 

into custody by Chinese authorities nearly a month ago.

  Twelve large sculptures by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei will be unveiled Monday in New York, but the whereabouts of their creator remain unknown.     Ai was taken into custody by Chinese authorities nearly a month ago and, according to his family, the government still has not told them where he is or why he was taken.

   Ai has always been outspoken in both his art and his life, but recent events in China and the Middle East have brought greater government scrutiny to one of the country's best-known artists.

A Visit With Ai Weiwei
   Two years ago, just before the Beijing Summer Olympics, I visited Ai at his sprawling studio complex in Beijing.
    At the time, the artist-activist was embroiled in yet another controversy: He had just quit the team in charge of designing Beijing's Olympic stadium — known as the Bird's Nest — calling China's attitude toward the Olympics a "pretend smile."  

   Ai told me that he saw the moment as an opportunity to use the Chinese government's methods against it, and poke a hole in its public relations campaign.

    We spoke in a studio filled with assistants and freely roaming cats. I held a microphone in front of Ai as he snapped pictures of me for his blog.

   Before being taken into custody, Ai was a prolific blogger who wrote as many as five posts a day and put up hundreds of photos at that same pace. He told me that blogging was his creative response to being under constant government surveillance.

Enlarge Jeff Kelley
 
In 2008, NPR's Laura Sydell sat down with artist Ai Weiwei at his studio in Beijing, where he kept his camera at arm's reach.

Jeff Kelley

  

  In 2008, NPR's Laura Sydell sat down with artist Ai Weiwei at his studio in Beijing, where he kept his camera at arm's reach.

   "Instead of [letting] somebody monitor me, I put everything on my blog," he said. "They can just read my blog."

   Since 2005, Ai had been blogging at the invitation of Sina, one of China's major Internet portals. But instead of the celebrity blog the site had initially hoped for, Ai gave them a stream of government criticism. Sina eventually asked him to tone it down, but Ai refused.

   He told them, "'I believe in freedom of expression and you can always close [it] down because it's your company. But I will never do self-censorship. Either you close it up or I will continue putting those things up.'"

   Sina ultimately let Ai keep his blog, after moving it off the home page.

Playing With The Public, The Sacred And The Ordinary

   According to independent art curator and critic Jeff Kelley, Ai is just as bold and confrontational in his visual art as he is in his activism.

   "He has taken the radical position of feeling as though it's his birthright to say whatever he wants to say," Kelley says.

    Still, Kelley says the message may be less direct in Ai's visual art, and therefore less threatening to Chinese authorities. Take, for example, the complex structure of the Olympic stadium, which could actually be read as a statement about democracy.

   "There's hundreds and hundreds of joints, none of them repeat themselves," Kelley says. "So in a certain way, it's a metaphor for the very idea of some cacophonous public speaking and it's a very democratic space."

       But Ai's works also play with what is sacred. In 1995, he created a series of photos that show him holding a valuable Han Dynasty vase, dropping it and letting it break into pieces.

Melissa Chiu, director of the Museum at the Asia Society in New York, says the vase photos commented on what China was doing to its cultural heritage.

"Great examples of architectural heritage were actually being destroyed to make way for new buildings," Chiu says. "And it was also a time when, within China, antiquities were not greatly valued. So he was kind of making a comment on this very particular moment."

Chiu says Ai has also made something sacred out of the ordinary.

Painting 100 Million Sunflower Seeds: A Futile Art Endeavor?

    For Sunflower Seeds, Ai commissioned a factory in China to make 100 million porcelain representations of the common Chinese snack. He then spread them across a floor at the Tate Modern in London.

    "So he's making something from every day into something very precious," Chiu says. "And if you've come across anybody who's been in London in the past few months, they've all got their handful of Ai Weiwei sunflower seeds."

Remembering China's Imperial Past

   On Monday, 12 800-pound animal heads designed by Ai to represent the Chinese zodiac will be unveiled in New York at Central Park's Pulitzer Fountain.

Ding Musa/AW Asia
   Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads makes its outdoor debut in New York on May 2.

Larry Warsh, founder of the AW Asia art organization, is responsible for bringing the work to New York. He says the piece Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads alludes to a recent incident in which two Qing Dynasty bronze sculptures of zodiac heads were put up for auction in Paris over the objection of the Chinese government.

     The sculptures were believed to be part of the famed 18^th century fountain-clock at the imperial Chinese retreat at Yuanming Yuan. The heads disappeared in 1860 when the retreat was pillaged by French and British troops.

   "It does bring questions [about] looting and who owns what," Warsh says.

Ai was scheduled to be in New York for the May 2 unveiling of Circle of Animals, but he's been in the custody of Chinese Authorities since April 3.

'He's Doing Activism As An Artist'

Many western observers say Ai is being detained because of what he had written on his blog.

Right after the 2008 earthquake that devastated China, for example, Ai began collecting the names of students who had died when poorly constructed schools collapsed. When the government refused to release the names of the dead, he posted them on his blog and built a wall for them.

   Critic Kelley remembers Ai showing him the work: "At that moment, something buckled in me and I said to myself, 'OK, is this art?' And then immediately I said, 'It doesn't matter. What matters is that he's doing it as an artist. He's doing activism as an artist.'"

   Ai collected more than 5,000 names and it was only after he released them that the government came forward with its own list.

  

One Voice For Many

   For a long time, it seemed like Ai's international fame gave him more leeway to be critical of the government. But the Asia Society's Chiu says that after the social media-spurred revolutions broke out in the Middle East, the climate in China shifted.

   "Now we have a situation where it's not just him, but scores of others that have also been detained," she says.

   Back in 2008, I asked Ai to weigh in the idea that his fame had given him more freedom to be critical of the government.

   "If that's true, that means I really have to work harder to make them more conscious about my existence," Ai said. "Because there [are] so many people who cannot have a voice."

Ai paused, then asked, "How can you predict what's in a dictator's mind? You know if you really think about them, you are already a victim of them."

npr.com

Eli Anatsui - Between Earth and Heavan

Between Earth and Heaven, 2006
El Anatsui (Ghanaian, b. 1944)
Aluminum, copper wire

91 x 126 in. (230 x 320 cm) 

detail

detail

Source: El Anatsui: [Between Earth and Heaven] (2007.96) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
This work by an African master of international renown is a highly original creation that constitutes a response to a classic canonical form of expression. It is a powerful instance of the vitality of contemporary expression in Africa and the continuity that exists with the traditional forms that are the focus of the Museum's collection. The recent series of works that Between Earth and Heaven relates to refer to the celebrated West African traditions of strip-woven textiles, namely that of kente developed by Akan and Ewe weavers in Anatsui's native Ghana. Those traditional textiles are at once monumental in scale and highly sculptural in the way they drape the body as the apparel of leaders. The undulation of this work evokes that tactile quality, and its resplendent color scheme of gold, red, and black translates and transposes the aesthetic of finely woven silk into the medium of base metal.

Source: El Anatsui: [Between Earth and Heaven] (2007.96) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

FINAL DATE FOR PORTFOLIO

MAY 2, 2011

AP STUDIO EXAM

Portfolio should be complete by 25th. 

This gives you one week to make finishing touches 

and shoot photogrphs

Odilion Redon

    An early Modernist, French Symbolist painter, lithographer, and etcher Odilon Redon (b. Bertrand-Jean Redon, 1840 –1916) explored imagination rather than perception in his art. Initially working almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography, his early works explore a darkly fantastic world of black and white amorphous creatures, and insects and plants with human heads, but in the latter years of his life Redon embraced pastels and oils, producing radiant, richly colored still lifes of flowers and vivid tableaux with religious and mythological themes.

    Though he disassociated himself from the established artistic movements of his day, Redon laid the groundwork for the Surrealist and Dada movements. Redon’s early work, darkly mysterious noir prints executed in shades of black, transformed the natural world into dark visions and strange fantasies, but Redon’s art took a dramatic shift when the artist was in his fifties, and he began producing luminous pastels and richly textured canvases that established his reputation as a noted colorist. From nightmares to daydreams, explore Odilon Redon’s imaginative art. 

One on One Critique - March 25th - Everything you have created so far.

Next Critique

Your Next Critique will be January 21st - 10 finished pieces are due!