Paula v.s. Concrete

Quote:
"Art luminaries are offering support to Paula Rego, the Portuguese painter whose backstreet studio in north London is under threat.
Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of Tate Galleries, and the sculptor Anthony Caro want council planners to halt a development that will cut natural light.
The Turner-nominated artist, 73, whose work has been collected by Charles Saatchi and Madonna, has maintained the studio in Camden since 1993. A planning application has been submitted for flats on the roof of a garage next door
"I have seen the plans and they will affect my light, casting a shadow across my work area," said Rego.
She has in the past spoken of the extraordinary light of her studio.
Sir Nicholas urged planners to reject the application. "The character of Camden Town depends on the presence of small creative businesses and of a very mixed community including artists," he said.

Nino De Angelis, the garage owner who submitted the application, said any work was not imminent. "I may like to sell the property when I retire and I have been advised that I would get more if I had planning permission," he said."

in The Independent

A bird's life

Auction house Phillips de Pury & Company is auctioning bird houses designed by world famous architects....

Piu Piu?

Royal Summer

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions is on.
Its a time were Artists and would be Artists can have a shot at displaying their works, at one of the world's most prestigious institutions.
Anyone can apply.

The Art of Living

Sometimes living is an Art itself.

I've been following Matt Harding for a few years now.

In 2003, he decided  he was missing LIFE itself and discovering the world. So he quit his job, got his savings together and started a trip to Asia.

Meanwhile to keep his family and friends aware of his whereabouts, he started a site, where he posted little videos of him in breathtaking, surreal locations.

He didn't know what to do, posing still seemed boring compared to those backgrounds... so he started a crazy dance... in all of them.

Yup "dancing Matt" was such an internet hit, with people gasping for air at the sight of some of those locations, and with millions wondering where he was at that moment, that Stride Gum decides to sponsor him. 

You heard it people. His job is exactly that: do the same travellings and filming himself and then letting Stride come in the end as a sponsor.

" WHERE THE HELL IS MATT?" . Not a clue at this exact moment. But I'll tell you where he has been in the last 14 months: in 42 countries!

In astonishing locations, sometimes breaking and bending the rules, making thousands of people now join his crazy dance. Making us understand how big and small this world really is.

Interacting with people and amassing a fantastic life experience.

How many contemporary Art projects and installations can do that?

Back to Grace

Goddess of the 80's, Grace Jones, is now in her 60's ....and BACK!!

I adore her performance-art-music persona.

"Last year, Jones made a sizeable impact when she appeared as Jarvis Cocker's guest at last year's Meltdown Festival at the Royal Festival Hall, singing "Trust In Me"; since then, she has completed a new album, Corporate Cannibal, recorded with her on/off beau, techno producer Ivor Guest, the fourth Viscount Wimborne, with a session crew that includes Sly & Robbie's Taxi Gang, Brian Eno, Tricky and Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen, also of The Good, The Bad & The Queen. It's scheduled for release this summer, when Jones will be headlining the Secret Garden Party; but she will doubtless premiere much of Corporate Cannibal on London's South Bank this Thursday, when she makes a headlining return to the Meltdown Festival, curated this year by Massive Attack. And with a pop landscape populated more than ever before by style icons lacking both style and iconic stature, the comeback of a performer possessing both in abundance, along with bigger balls than most boy-bands, is a welcome prospect indeed."

Massive Attack's Meltdown, Southbank Centre, London SE1 (0871 663 2500), to 24 June; Grace Jones will be appearing tomorrow, the 19th

Bringing the House down

Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren have been jilting the boat for a while.
There is no point on complaining their cloths itch. Specially when they come packed with their own lighting and sound systems.
Details apart, The Barbican has commissioned the Dutch fashion and design anarchists Viktor & Rolf, a spectacular installation.
Starting tomorrow, the 18th June, Barbican Art Gallery in partnership with Premsela, Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion, presents The House of Viktor & Rolf programme.

The Barbican Art Gallery has been transformed by the two designers into a 6m-high, three-storey doll's house, part-English stately home, part-turn-of-the-20th-century department store in flavour. The installation is the centrepiece of the designers' first London show, and is peopled with no less than 55 Viktor & Rolf-clad dolls, each of them just 2ft high and only recently unwrapped from their polythene packaging, having travelled all the way from the Viktor & Rolf atelier in Amsterdam, where they and their clothes have been lovingly attended to for the past year or more.

The dolls are made entirely by hand in the traditional manner, their heads created by a Belgian master-craftsman. "The heads are baked five times," Horsting says with pride, apparently relishing the precise and somewhat macabre nature of the process. Each is named after and styled to resemble the model who originally wore their outfit.

On opening day evening, Turner Prize artist/ alter-ego transvestite, Grayson Perry, explores in a debate with his stylist, Sonja Harms, as part of Living Dolls, the power held by dolls over our imaginations, from childhood to adulthood.

Dear Lord: why have I retired to the countryside?

Masters Tits Up

Let this serve me as a lesson and never again endorse courses of whatever kind and provenance... without having taken them myself first!

Tate's course on "old masters" techniques has left me enraged and sighing my 20 pounds!

I enrolled, because I wanted to see the juice that would pour out of conservationists mouths,  having a hands on approach and accessibility on some of these works, namely the Pre-Raphaelites and Whistler.

What one gets for 20 pounds is not worth a penny. Not that I was expecting "Advanced Techniques for the will be Master"...

The Pre-Raphaelite chapter is as poor as it gets. A  lot of watery, generalist , THEORICAL  writing, and ONE ( yes one) video reel of one of the conservationists, showing how to prepare one of the so called mediums used at the time, to add into the oils.

Pre-Raphaelite technique on the other hand was quite complex! A multitude of translucent glazes, mixed with mediums of their concoction, as well as varnishes, overlapping  lighter colors and backgrounds, hardly ever mixing white to light up tone, but rather applying it under, as pure color and then use a wash of color over, much as a stainglass.

What really made the hair on the back of my head straight up , was the Whistler section.

More videos, sure. Not deeper content for that matter.

But the rotten cherry, was hearing the Head of Conservation Science, Stephen Hackney, mumbling and stumbling about Whistler's techniques and materials, whistle exacting " He used oils that came on a tube like this ("Winton" from Winsor&Newton: the cheap student range!), diluted in oil and spirit of turpentine, but for health and safety reasons , we are using water (!!)"

Ok. Time out.

Oils that dilute in water are in the market for the last decade or so. They are  mostly in an extremely translucent range mixed with mineral oils, therefore water soluble.

They lack richness, bold and body. To have the conservation department of a top museum saying that they don't want to smell turps and linseed oil...for God's sake man, you have the facilities: open up a window!

One of the conservationist then pretend to show how the process of painting was done.

Whistlers lavish, extremely rich and runny washes, were reduced to a dabbling of a few darker tones (of a mighty stiff consistency, one must point) and just as the harder parts would come: controlling washes and overlapping, its CUT!

Please proceed to your quiz and don't forget your hat on the way out.

Guttered.