Tobias Keene and the Generations show at The Trout Museum of Art

I just spent the majority of the day on Thursday at The Trout Museum of Art, finishing up the setup of a really wonderful exhibition that opened on a limited basis tonight, and to the public tomorrow.

"You can just be a crazy bugger, it doesn't matter." -- Tobias Keene

We finished setting up this artist's absolutely marvelous show today, and I urge anyone and everyone within getting-here distance to check this show out. It's open to the public April 13-July 21, 2013, $6 admission, and it's actually three generations of Keene painters.

Tobias Keene, whose work is the primary spectacle, lives in LA and is originally from England. His father, Arthur Keene, painted and drew for most of his life, and Tobias's grandfather, English World War II artist Arthur "Van Art" Keene was known for his illustrations, paintings and graphic work. They all have a style that reflects their generation, their subject matter, their aims as artists and painters. It's a really spectacular grouping of work. 

Tobias Keene's architectonic scale paintings, done primarily in oil, are attention-grabbing and edgy. He utilizes thick paint, huge canvases, and bright colors to demonstrate a thoroughly contemporary take on subject matter that often looks back in history, such as Louis XIV or Nike of Samothrace (the Winged Victory). They all contain a certain amount of mystery, with traditional and historical images put into a contemporary context with emphasis on pattern and color, such as The Orange Pope which depicts an image of a seated Pope, certainly an homage to Francis Bacon in a particularly Keene rendering.

My particular favorite is The Girl in the Golden Chair #4, in which Keene has captured the elusive and recognizable expression of a bored/tired/annoyed red-haired, barefoot girl slumped down in a chair, whose direct gaze draws the viewer not only into the composition, but into the imagined psyche of the subject. What is the girl doing there? Is she waiting for someone? Could she be hungry? How long has she been there? Is she waiting to go somewhere, and where might she be headed? Or, conversely, what are you looking at?

It's a must-see show, a first of its kind for Appleton. 

Gottfried Helnwein

Via Hi-Fructose

This says it all. I love it. This particular image, titled simply Childs Head, by Gottfried Helnwein will appear in a show in Toronto opening November 28 which will also include work by Ray Caesar and Catherine Howe among others.

I'd never heard of Gottfried Helnwein before, so I checked out his website. Dude is serious. Some good images of him at work are available on his page, but it's worth a glance at collections that own his work in the US and abroad to give you an idea of the scale of this artist's influence among the art collectors -- his work belongs to numerous outstanding contemporary art museums as well as the private collections of celebrities ranging from Nicholas cage to Marilyn Manson.

Opening May 1, 2013 he will have a solo show at the Friedman Benda Gallery in Chelsea, NYC. Just in case one finds oneself in New York...

Abstraktes Bild = $34.3 million

Abstraktes Bild, Gehrard Richter, 1994

This painting sums up why I am both in love with and entirely mystified by the art world. Or, shall I say, the art market. Art history and the art market are necessarily related, but also completely separate. I appreciate Gehrard Richter, 80, as an artist, for example. I think this painting is an exemplary piece of contemporary art. His name is practically synonymous with contemporary art.

And this painting just sold at Sotheby's for £21,321,250 ($34,297,363). The sale broke the record for largest sale of a piece of work by a living artist. Which at those figures I imagine is pretty easy to believe. Sure, it's a big painting at 102 3/8 x 133 7/8in. The Guardian has a good image for scale. And like I said, it's exemplary. But $34.5 million????

Oh wait, I forgot to mention that it was sold from Eric Clapton's private collection. Right.

So that seems to be where the difference comes in. An extremely large part of why this painting sold for so much is because of that lovely little word that museums love (to hate?): provenance. For collectors and connoisseurs, where the painting has been before is almost as important as the painting itself. 

I love this painting (I'll just throw that out there, it's true), but the value of work is something that kind of boggles the mind. And this isn't the highest auction figure -- not by a long shot. Gustav Klimt is a notoriously high raker-in -- figures have exceeded $40 million. And back in May of this year, Edvard Munch's The Scream set the record at nearly $120 million.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS.

Phew!

It's interesting that my job at the bookstore is largely based on placing values on books and other printed and recorded material so that they can be resold. All day long I compare current prices from in-print as well as out-of-print and occasionally collectible material. It's interesting then, in a way, that I don't see art this way at all. I can't even begin to start placing a monetary value on The Scream, or on a Monet, or a Vermeer or whatever. How can one-of-a-kind artistic and even cultural icons have price tags? It seems so weird. But then again, I'm not a collector or an appraiser. I thought about becoming one -- yes, I started an application to Christie's in London, but alas, I just couldn't wrap my head around it. The cash that people/companies are willing to shell out to purchase -- actually, invest in these works is just amazement itself.

But the numbers keep rising to baffling heights, and I just have to sit back and take it all in. Because I just don't get it at all. I do, but again, I don't. 

graffiti as residential ornament.

via contemporist

this house is alright -- picture below. i like it. i don't love it on the whole. but that being said, i do love that they incorporated graffiti into the exterior design. understandably, they're trying to make an artistic statement. even the name of the house is the "open air sculpture house" by marek rytych architekt in poland. it's a pretty luxurious modern space, chock full -- i'm sure -- of a pretty extensive art collection. but this doesn't matter.

what does matter is the graffiti, which is the only reason i thought this house was really worth posting about. i love that there's a "framed" section for graffiti on the outside, complete with lights. so it doesn't look like some kid with a spraycan came and just did whatever the hell he felt like -- it has a place, and it's lit like a framed piece of art in any other display -- except this is the back yard or something. i would totally love a designated place for graffiti on my house -- something that works with the design, looks like an outdoor artwork. because it is. it's great! smart thinking.

elephant mag.

via curated

elephant, a new contemporary art and visual culture magazine just launched over the winter, and i managed to snag a copy of the first issue at b&n while i was there earlier today... i was meaning to find a copy of modern painters magazine, and for some reason they don't carry that one anymore. sad, sad day.

but then i found this. the second issue has been released so i wanted to make sure to nab this while i could.

so far i'm really impressed. i'll be the first to admit that i only scrape the surface when it comes to my knowledge of contemporary art. hence the interest in periodicals, because i learn a lot that way about what's going on super-currently. (i had to grab the current issue of artforum, too, because it rules for one, and for two it had a film still of a burning turntable on the front. how perfect.)

anyway, i'm totally in love with it. its layout is interesting, its organized reasonably well, and though it's printed in england and costs me a walloping $20, it's worth it to not have to deal with advertisements. you really do get what you pay for. and i'm totally loving this... especially the article on gianpaolo pagni called "graphic painting." one learns a lot, and learns about more to like.

like like love. :)

calvin tomkins' "lives of the artists."

image via fargfabriken

above image is maurizio cattelan's Him, 2001. that is adolf hitler, praying. and i only include it because i can't find a decent image of tomkins' book cover and this is far more interesting.

tomkins' book was published in 2008, a collection of articles he wrote throughout the last couple decades on contemporary and living artists -- jeff koons, damien hirst, cindy sherman, maurizio cattelan, and more. it's a fantastic, easy-to-read, easy-to-digest overview of these artists, all of whom are absolute giants in the art world in their own way, and tomkins provides compelling explanations why. he includes interview notes and quotes by the artists that are at turns poignant and hilarious. where it might be easy for him to throw in his own criticisms of the work that he presents (Him by cattelan is one of the examples in that part), he lets the artist do the talking, and gives you, the reader, an opening to check the work out for yourself before you start absorbing others' judgments prior to seeing it yourself.

this is a really cool book; i found it at the library, but if i come across a copy at the bookstore, i might just have to snag this one for my own library. :)

laurie frick and her house.

via contemporist

it's been a while since i've come across a new modern residence in my daily perusing that has had me feel so warm and content as this one in austin, tx by krdb. one thing it has going for it is the warmer climate of texas, where i'm always drawn to the desert plant landscaping and the possibility for more open, airy spaces. what's so exciting about this house (for an artist, laurie frick -- the things one discovers!) is how it seems to combine homey-ness and material collections with gallery-like open spaces and white, modern walls. an obvious choice for an artist, but it still seems full of life -- which a lot of modern houses, in their very concept, are not at all. i love the industrial hints -- the I-beams on the ceilings, mixed in with the rugs and pottery and books! and art! it's great. it's not so minimal; a change.

laurie frick's stuff is pretty cool. should check out the link above; she does collages out of found postcards, books, papers, etc. and makes some really spectacular works out of art out of them.

damien in the bin.

starting with this: michael landy is a british artist who likes to make art out of trash. the picture above depicts "christmas tree", 1997, at the tate. with that said, his latest venture is the art bin, into which he has invited other artists to throw their art. damien hirst is one of these, along with tracey emin, julian opie, and gary hume. i love love love the irony. it's no secret that some (usually art-illiterate) folks don't care at all for a lot of contemporary art -- it's not art! my kindergartener could do that! -- you've heard it. you've maybe thought the same, or said. regardless, it's a great play on that concept. and the bin is enormous! over the span of the exhibit, starting january 29 and running through march 10, artists' works will be trashed in the bin, and as the exhibition's page states, "Art Bin will gradually fill up over the six week course of the exhibition to create ’a monument to creative failure’." fantastic!

worth noting, just for humor's sake, in 2001: damien in the bin.

florentijn hofman.

via florentijn hofman

i've (sort of) rediscovered florentijn hofman, a dutch contemporary artist who devotes himself to installations that are often quite large in scale and probably intense to behold in person. i first found him (though not knowing who he was) when i found a few photos of rubber duck (2009) which is a traveling -- and giant -- rubber duck that floats on water. it has traveled to and from several continents now, its latest stop being osaka, japan. it started out in amsterdam, and has also visited other parts of europe, and brazil.

the above installation is from his solo show "dushi" at the hague where he changes the dimensions of familiar stuffed animals and gives the idea an entirely new feeling.

i think this guy is super fantastic. i love how he plays with everyday things and concepts -- rubber ducks, delivery vans, and coats of paint on buildings. but when he sculpts something, either throwing it out of scale or distorting it, he adds a sense of "how comfortable am i with this?" to it. it's like if i went to reach for my cell phone and it was the size of a couch. or if my house was wrapped in purple cellophane, how would i feel about that? would it still be my house? would it cease to be a house, and in turn become something else? a candy, perhaps? or a present?

there's a bit of jeff koons' balloon animals crossed with a marc jacobs handbag in his inflated 3 caniches (2008). there's a huge nod to christo and jean-claude's wrapped reichstag-era in his blue beukelsblauw (2004-06) and campaign for orange (2006). it might lean a little bit TOO much toward these other contemporary tops. but i still like hofman.

and by the way, christo and jean-claude, if you ever get that arkansas river project, i will BE THERE. it's been in the works for too long. too long.

liu bolin.

liu bolin! my latest find. can check out a bunch more of his work here, and a short profile with exhibition history here. the photograph above is entitled graffiti, 2008. his latest work is in a similar fashion: he paints chinese citizens to blend in with their backgrounds. he's only recently been exhibited outside of china, and i only learned about him yesterday. but i got a big kick out of it! and he's worth keeping an eye on. i think it's a cool take on raw photography in this era of digital photographic manipulation and retouching. additionally, he sculpts. and it doesn't take a genius to detect direct chinese political tones in much of it. one such sculpture i like is his bronze burning man 3, 2007, depicting a burning chairman mao statue. i don't think he could have been more clear. worth a look. :)