power of the image

Designer Toys

2009-02-05T01:24:00.000-08:00

Frank Kozik

Robert Lebeck's portraits

2009-02-03T00:02:00.000-08:00

On the Photo of Robert Lebeck everyone can play himself.

Like Jackie Kennedy and Lee Radziwill,

Alfred Hitchcock,

Romy Schneider

and... who's that?

STOPmen

2009-02-02T09:06:00.000-08:00

For some women men are only a sto(p)per :)

matrix re-incarnation: After a short :) break "post-men" is back :)

2009-01-14T04:41:00.000-08:00

After couple of months staying in the bed:

I've decided to post some nudes:
Andreas H. Bitesnich: Irina, Vienna 2005

Andreas H. Bitesnich: Sara, Vienna 2003

Andreas Bitesnich: Mani and Isi, Vienna 2003

Well I haven't expected that so many ways to show men's body wasn't explore until now...

fears of multiplication

2008-05-09T08:03:00.000-07:00

Some day you will seat in your flat and you will call your love cat. He will come, but as much green as milion others which will come with him... That was happend already with Sandy Skoglund's cat, so prepare youreself and be ready for that day. See more multiplicate, atomic animals on: http://www.sandyskoglund.com/

BBC NEWS: no comment:)

2008-05-09T06:02:00.001-07:00

Max Ernst: The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses, 1926

"Ernst" in German means "serious"...

period of love

2008-05-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

Raoul Hausmann (July 12, 1886 – February 1, 1971) was an Austrian sculptor and writer. He was one of the key figures of Dada in Berlin (moved there from Vienna). He was recognizable because of his conceptual creativity and radicalism.
But perhaps seeing him only through his political-engagement doesn’t let to understand his personality. Series of not well known photos of Vera Broido, which I have found in Berlinische Gallerie (Museum of Contemporary Art), suggests that he have also contemplative, romantic and melancholic part of his nature.

Vera Broido was born in St Petersburg in 1907, the daughter of two Russian Jewish revolutionaries. In 1914 when Vera was only seven, her mother was exiled to Western Siberia for her anti-war attitudes; so Vera boarded the Transiberian Express and set off with her mother for a place so far away that even the newspapers didn't reach her. Thanks to father she could emigrate to Germany. During her stay in Berlin she meets Hausmann becoming his model and partner between 1928 and 1934.

Their intensive relationship results in series of photos with very intimate atmosphere.

Photos focused on Vera, showing several parts of her body in very contemplative manner.

On the field of his visions of Vera, Hausmann effectuates also kind of self-observation. He was fascinating as much in Vera’s body and her being, as in his own process of seeing her and the question how this seeing determines their relation.

He has known that things are passing away very un-expectedly and that inspired him to focus on mysticism of the single moment as the only opportunity in which he was in able to feel closeness to Vera.

He explores his own voyeurism as only manner to define his feelings.

This voyeurism which could changes into obsession realize in general very sad truth about the nature of every contact between two people. In fact the moment of someone’s appearing

is pendant to her absence.

catched in action

2008-05-08T00:24:00.000-07:00

Emilio Vedova at work in his studio in Venice:

Emilio Vedova (August 9, 1919 − November 25, 2006) was an Italian modern painter, considered one of the most important to emerge in his country's artistic scene after World War II. Vedova was born in Venice into a working-class family. Between 1930 and 1935 the artist worked in a factory, for a photographer and restorer, as an artist he was mainly an autodidact. After an initial formative experience within Expressionism, he joined the group "Corrente" (1942-43), which included other artists such as Renato Guttuso and Renato Birolli. He participated in the Resistenza and played a key role in the post-war Italian art movement, which was opening up and contributing originally to the European avant-garde. His work exerted a significant influence on the Arte Povera group.

His formal experiment with un-consious and sensitive spreading colour on the irregular-shaped-like canvases must be recognise as a kind of action painting and meta-language's, self-reflexive statement about painting at all. It brings to consideration some resemblance with such artists like Jackson Pollock, Jasper Jones (Shaped Canvases) and the whole group of Geometric abstract artists, minimalists, and hard-edge painters, which elected to use the edges of the image to define the shape of the painting rather than accepting the rectangular format. But to define influence between abstract artist seem to be much more complicated than in figurative painting.

Jackson Pollock at work in his studio, NY 1920:

space of imagination / imagination of space

2008-05-07T02:29:00.000-07:00

This very esthetic nude, which was accidentally found in internet and which comes from one Art Gallery in Xian only supperficially focuses on women's body. Figure of filigree women at the front recalls very suggestively the figure of Courbet's Real Allegory (1855) and turns ours reception in other direction.

Relation between two figures seen to be paralel. Their juxtaposition to the background exposes the same problem. Field of the "paint in paint" from Courbet's representation seem to be as much flat in comparison with representation of the model, as traditional chinese fresco in confrontation with 3-dimensional figure in the forderground of the paint from Xian's Gallery.

about continuity in art beyond time and space.

2008-05-07T01:41:00.001-07:00

Several portraits were painted of Gabrielle D'Estrées and her sister, the Duchess of Villars. This one where the sister is pinching Gabrielle's nipple is one of the most famous. As a kid I was intrigued by it, because at least to modern eyes it isn't immediately apparent that they're sitting in a bathtub. Instead they look as though they're standing naked at the window, or like horses emerging from behind the door of a stable. This paint done in 1595 inspires imaginary of Wang Qingsong, who adapted this concept for own photography made in 2003. But is the new version as much provocative as the old one?

good art in bad use?

2008-05-07T01:28:00.000-07:00

something about old political caricature...

first exhibition in non-existing museum

2008-04-21T00:44:00.000-07:00

Tomas Gotovac: kissing asphalt, 1981 Zagreb

The Gorgon Group, performance Looking in the sky, 1966 Zagreb.

Not well known art, but...

As soon as I open my eyes I see a film.”Experiment in the art of Yugoslavia in the 60’s and 70’s.April 24 – June 21 2008
The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw is pleased to present it’s first exhibition at it’s temporary headquarters. “As soon as I open my eyes I see a film. Experiment in the art of Yugoslavia in the 60’s and 70’s” is a research project and exhibition about experimental strategies in visual arts in the common cultural space of former Yugoslavia. The developments in visual arts in Yugoslavia in the 60’s and 70’s were not exempt form the radical redefinitions of the art practice characteristic to this ever fascinating period in history. Art embarked on a journey into reality beyond the confines of the studio and the gallery, in an attempt to be more responsive to the world.

history of the cat

2008-04-16T16:14:00.001-07:00

Everyone knows CHAT NOIR by Theophile Alfons Steinlein, but who knows that this cat have had longer history?

On the edge of the gender

2008-04-16T15:44:00.000-07:00

Semiology of connotation was explored by Roland Barthes. In his theory of realistic representation a work of art pretend to be a part of real word throughout ideal mystification, which is supported by the “rule of stereotype and detail”. A work of art seem to be realistic when it repeats a conventional belief. On ground of this sentence Barthes builds a distinction between: “pleasant show” and “show of bliss (delight)”. The first one recalls a stereotype. For example: every nude brings in our mind a stereotype of the women. The second makes a play with spectator; sticks him out from automatism, like Sleeping Indymin of Girodet-Trisson. His pose is feminine but we recognize a men through his penis. Through association in the first view we become some kind of fear, if words are able to reflect the real “meaning of the thing”; meaning of the essence. We lost our sure about power of the words – they are defeated by the power of the picture; power of the sign. Thanks to margins, which were left, this picture is unclear and we focus all our attention on the problem of representation, not of identification. We don’t ask if he is a women, but how women’s part of him exists in this creation. He breaks an order of Hegel’s conception. In Endymion's case the thesis and antithesis aren’t a new thesis, but there are connected in once. The world doesn’t base on dichotomy any more, it’s doesn’t base on different statements, where a meaning profits their rightness through their denial. That's why it brings us to delight...

feet's fetishist

2008-04-16T02:36:00.000-07:00

George Clooney was asked by one journalist: Are you women-feet's fetishist? Actor answered: Well... Fetishist, perhaps not, but the fact that woman have feet is very important to me... Perhaps the same reasons have had Adolph Mezel, when he painted his own leg. This painting can be viewed as a painted caricature of Realism. The German artist used the canvas to criticise the new direction in painting, whose adherents preferred everyday, and sometimes trivial, subjects, to literary or historical themes (Menzel himself generally painted more exalted subjects). Here he decided portray a leg, a symbol of tryviality... But throughout this example we should think also about men's feet in some more friendly manner...

Let them dance!

2008-04-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

Does the photographer Stanisław Markowski know that tango is a poem of the longing soul? The famous description "firulete" refers to the steps that dance-couple make as a skill display to seduce and beautify the dance, and it is the detail that transforms the tango into a showy spectacle. The tango has wide range of choreographic options, making it intriguing and of singular visual beauty. It is important to differentiate the choreographic dance from the improvised one. In the first one, the dancers skills offer a specific rehearsed show, while the improvised dance is unexpected and does not come out as a result of rehearsals but shows creativity and expertise. So don't disturb. Let them dance...

charming lady

2008-04-14T13:03:00.001-07:00

Alexander Roslin was a Swedish portraitist who worked mainly in France. However, the lady, with her mystical smile, is neither royal nor a member of society. She is Roslin’s wife, the artist Marie-Suzanne Giroust. Enjoy the atmosphere...

idyll on the edge

2008-04-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

Felix Valloton: Le monsieur et la dame, 1909. Searching for the aura of this paint I would ask: who is hidding behind the hat? Tête-à-tête galant? Only element which can give us an answer is the shadow of women's hand...