Helen Frankenthaler 1928-2011

The New York Times:

Helen Frankenthaler, the lyrically abstract painter whose technique of staining pigment into raw canvas helped shape an influential art movement in the mid-20th century, and who became one of the most admired artists of her generation, died on Tuesday at her home in Darien, Conn. She was 83.

Her longtime assistant, Maureen St. Onge, said Ms. Frankenthaler died after a long illness but gave no other details.

Known as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist, Ms. Frankenthaler was married during the movement’s heyday to the painter Robert Motherwell, a leading first-generation member of the group. But she departed from the first generation’s romantic search for the “sublime” to pursue her own path.

Refining a technique, developed by Jackson Pollock, of pouring pigment directly onto canvas laid on the floor, Ms. Frankenthaler, heavily influencing the colorists Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, developed a method of painting best known as Color Field — although Clement Greenberg, the critic most identified with it, called it Post-Painterly Abstraction. Where Pollock had used enamel that rested on raw canvas like skin, Ms. Frankenthaler poured turpentine-thinned paint in watery washes onto the raw canvas so that it soaked into the fabric weave, becoming one with it.

Her staining method emphasized the flat surface over illusory depth, and it called attention to the very nature of paint on canvas, a concern of artists and critics at the time. It also brought a new open airiness to the painted surface and was credited with releasing color from the gestural approach and romantic rhetoric of Abstract Expressionism.

The 30 Harshest Artist-on-Artist Insults In History

flavorwire.com

1. Andy Warhol on Jasper Johns:
“Oh, I think he’s great. He makes such great lunches.”

2. Salvador Dalí on Piet Mondrian:
“Completely idiotic critics have for several years used the name of Piet Mondrian as though he represented the sum mum of all spiritual activity. They quote him in every connection. Piet for architecture, Piet for poetry, Piet for mysticism, Piet for philosophy, Piet’s whites, Piet’s yellows, Piet, Piet, Piet… Well, I Salvador, will tell you this, that Piet with one ‘i’ less would have been nothing but pet, which is the French word for fart.”

3. Marc Chagall on Pablo Picasso:
“What a genius, that Picasso… It’s a pity he doesn’t paint.”

4. William Powhida on Takashi Murakami:
“…that hack Murakami trying to consume the market whole and ended up designing handbags…”

5. Pierre-Auguste Renoir on Leonardo da Vinci:
“He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machines.”

6. Linder Sterling on Damien Hirst:
“Dead butterflies, cows, horses, humans, sheep, and sharks — it reads like the inventory of a funerary Noah. How many halved calves suspended in formaldehyde does the world need? To my way of thinking, none.”

7. Edgar Degas on Georges-Pierre Seurat:
“I wouldn’t have noticed it except that it was so big.”

8. Joseph Beuys on Marcel Duchamp:
“The silence of Marcel Duchamp is overrated. It has become the territory of a few intellectuals, far from the life of people.”

9. Mihail Chemiakin on Voina:
“Many of us can draw a phallus with our eyes closed, but to create something serious? That’s hard, that needs to be studied. Anyone can be an amateur shit-doodling hooligan. It’s unpleasant and casts a shadow on all serious artists.”

10. Frida Kahlo on the European Surrealists:
“They are so damn ‘intellectual’ and rotten that I can’t stand them anymore… I’d rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than have anything to do with those ‘artistic’ bitches of Paris.”

Read all 30 at flavorwire.com

John Chamberlain 1927-2011

The New York Times:

John Chamberlain, who almost singlehandedly gave automotive metal a place in the history of sculpture, smashing and twisting together a poetic fusion of Abstract Expressionism and Pop from fenders, fins, bumpers and hoods, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 84.

His wife, Prudence Fairweather, announced his death but declined to give a cause. He had spent his last years mostly in Shelter Island, N.Y.

Maria Nordman Filmroom: Smoke, 1967–Present

Her work looks very interesting. Had to share this with you guys...

LACMA:

"Maria Nordman is internationally known as one of the most significant artists to emerge from Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s. FILMROOM: SMOKE is one of her earliest artworks, made at the time she left UCLA graduate school.

“Nordman is so often categorized as part of LA’s so-called ‘Light and Space’ movement, but in fact her work comes from a completely different—and appropriately Los Angeles inspired—point of view, demonstrated not only by her numerous projects in Europe and the U.S. in the last decade, but also by this early landmark artwork,” said Michael Govan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director.

A single room silent double projection, FILMROOM: SMOKE incorporates a real chair and documents two actors interacting with the same chair on the beach at the ocean’s edge. The side-by-side projections, divided by a wall, describe two distinctly different camera compositions: one largely active and detailed, and one more still and general. The filmic picture plane is literally aligned with the meeting of earth and water along the L.A. coastline."

Its available for view at LACMA until the January 15, 2012!

What do you guys and girls think about this work? How does it make you feel?

Share your thoughts!

Archaeologists are Unravelling the Mysteries of Stonehenge

A team of archaeologists has found two previously undiscovered sub-surface pits that have shed new light on the Stonehenge mystery. The two large pits are positioned within what is referred to as the Neolithic Cursus pathway, placing them in alignment with the rising and setting of the midsummer sun when viewed from Sonehenge's Heel Stone. The pits may have contained stones, posts or fires that would have marked the rise and fall of the sun over the horizon, lending to theories that the stone monument may have been used as a place of sun worship.

This is the first time we have seen anything quite like this at Stonehenge and it provides a more sophisticated insight into how rituals may have taken place within the Cursus and the wider landscape. These exciting finds indicate that even though Stonehenge was ultimately the most important monument in the landscape, it may at times not have been the only, or most important, ritual focus and the area of Stonehenge may have become significant as a sacred site at a much earlier date.

Researchers claim that the land on which Stonehenge stands may have been used as an ancient ritual site as many as 5,000 years before the erection of its iconic, standing stones.

Source: Past Horizons

The surreal architecture of Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona

By Rebecca Ruiz, Senior editor, msnbc.com
Like other major Spanish cities, Barcelona has many charms -- some of them magical. Antoni Gaudí's surreal architecture would arguably be atop any list of these attractions.
Born in 1852 in a small town outside of Barcelona, Gaudí is chiefly known for the Sagrada Familia, a church (pictured above) that is structured in the shape of a Latin cross. Work began on the Gothic-revival building in 1882; Gaudí joined the project the following year and continued to work on it until his death in 1926.
The dramatic Nativity facade, dedicated to Jesus' birth, and crypt are among several of Gaudí's works on UNESCO's World Heritage List. Gaudí's style, which included undulating lines, pops of color and spatial creativity, "anticipated and influenced many of the forms and techniques that were relevant to the development of modern construction in the 20th century," according to UNESCO.
If you'd like to see the article go here : La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain
--Its amazing to see the differences between the work of Gaudi and the Gothic and Romanesque architecture we have learned for the past 2 or 3 weeks. Can spot any major differences between this and the cathedrals we have studied?

Watts Towers | LACMA

LACMA:
"Constructed between 1921 and 1954/55 by Italian immigrant Simon Rodia, the Watts Towers have become an iconic monument to the city.

The collection of seventeen structures, which Rodia himself called Nuestro Pueblo (“our town”), were erected by hand and made of steel rods wrapped in wire mesh and coated with cement. Embedded into nearly every inch of the environment are shards of ceramics, bottles tiles, shells, and other scraps—often brought to Rodia by others in the neighborhood.

Owned by the State of California and managed by the City of Los Angeles, The Watts Towers are a National Historic Landmark and one of the most widely recognized works of art to come out of Southern California in the last century.

LACMA has partnered with the City of Los Angeles’s Department of Cultural Affairs toward the preservation of this landmark work of art. Throughout 2011 LACMA’s Conservation Center will develop a comprehensive plan for the long-term preservation of the Towers"

"I had in mind to do something big and I did it."—Simon Rodia



What do you guys feel about this unique piece? Do you see it as something sophisticated or simply an eye sore? What if these towers were stationed in front of your house?

ARTicles, Issue 9, December 2011

ARTicles, Issue 9, is now available. Find your copy at the Center for the Arts and the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art or view it online at http://www.chaffeyarticles.com/ (links for all issues are at upper-right corner of page).

In this issue:
Fall Dance Student Showcase by Katelyn Cochran
The Many Faces of Quinton Bemiller by Timothy Haerens
Chaffey Celebrates Dia de los Muertos by Katelyn Cochran
Heading Out: Christopher Alday by Minh Vo
Radio Edit: iconomaniacs by Sheila Taylor

ARTicles is a student-driven publication of the Chaffey College Center for the Arts. It is published twice each semester by a consortium of students with a passion for arts, entertainment and culture. The content reflects a diverse sample of the cultural life at the college. ARTicles is generously supported by the Chaffey College Marketing Department.