ART IS ALIVE

Friday, July 31, 2009

Tasty cherries by Simon Costin, 2009

Cherries
Simon Costin, 2009

Created for Autumn/Winter 2009 Albion Cosmetics campaign, photographed by Tim Walker. Edition of 9. Painted fibreglass, painted resin. 70 x 38 x 36cm There may be some colour variation between individual objects. This is a feature of their unique design and handcraft and should not be interpreted as a flaw.

To learn more: http://shop.showstudio.com/

Experimenta Design Lisboa

Experimenta Design will open on 9 September 2009 and will last until Sunday 8 November 2009, taking place in various locations in Lisbon, Portugal.

Time is the theme of the 5th edition of this biennial of contemporary design, architecture and creativity taking place in the cutting-edge and beautiful city of Lisbon, Portugal. From the design of objects and devices that improve people's lives, the biennal focuses on people and ideas.

The programme includes Quick, Quick, Slow, an exhibition that explores the dimension of time in graphic design; Timeless, an experimental showcase of new concepts and strategies addressing the motto ‘Less is More’; and Stop & Think, an editorial project that challenges leading magazines from across the world to place insightful criticism at the top of their agendas.

To learn more: www.experimentadesign.pt

Beautiful video: The Rolling Stones "Anybody Seen My Baby"

The Manchester Art Gallery celebrates women artists and Surrealism

Dora Maar

Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism
26 September 2009 – 10 January 2010
Manchester Art Gallery

The first major exhibition of women artists and Surrealism to be held in Europe, Angels of Anarchy , opens this autumn at Manchester Art Gallery. Featuring over 100 artworks by 33 women artists, the exhibition is a celebration of the crucial, but at the time not fully recognised, role that women artists have played within Surrealism.

Lee Miller - Self Portrait with Sphinxes

Paintings, prints, photographs, surreal objects and sculptures by well-known international artists including Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Leonora Carrington and Lee Miller will be exhibited alongside works by artists less well-known in the UK, including Emila Medková, Jane Graverol, Mimi Parent, Kay Sage and Francesca Woodman. Manchester Art Gallery is the only venue for this exhibition, making it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the works of so many significant women artists displayed together, with many of the works on loan from international public and private collections.

Frida Kahlo - En frente del espejo

Frida Kahlo - Still life

Angels of Anarchy includes some of the most important, radical (and sometimes still shocking) Surrealist works produced during the 20th century by women artists from across the globe, including artists from Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Mexico, Switzerland, the UK and the USA.

Jane Graverol - L’Esprit Saint, 1965

The exhibition is an ambitious exploration of how women artists have responded to and challenged the traditionally male-dominated artistic subjects of landscape, portraiture, still-life, the domestic interior and fantasy within the Surrealist genre. Through these five themes, the show reveals how these women have developed, enriched and significantly reshaped Surrealism to create an empowering and erotic art form which speaks of their experiences as women and as artists.

To learn more: Manchester Art Gallery Mosley Street Manchester M2 3JL www.manchestergalleries.org

Andy Warhol is alive: exhibition at the Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens

There are so many ways to explore and reinvent Warhol's oeuvre. This exhibition taking place in Athens is another example. Andy Warhol really succeeded in being everywhere. I could be dedicating this blog to all things Warhol as there's not a day without Warhol-related-news.

This autumn, the Byzantine & Christian Museum, Athens, presents the ground-breaking exhibition, Warhol/Icon: The Creation of Image. The exhibition brings together key portraits by Andy Warhol from across the entire range of his career, providing a telling critique of the modern obsession with fame, a concept which fascinated Warhol and which stands at the centre of his work.

Set against the backdrop of the world’s greatest collection of Byzantine icons, the exhibition of Warhol’s media-derived images of contemporary celebrities explores the idea of the iconic in his portraiture. Curated by the distinguished Warhol scholar Paul Moorhouse, the exhibition probes the enduring significance and value of the icon, connecting historic sacred antecedents with Warhol’s modern icons: images of the famous created in a celebrity-obsessed secular era.

Common to the historic and modern concepts of an icon, the idea of worship is a central link. Warhol’s work endorses, dissects – and employs – those processes by which a real person’s identity becomes progressively obscured by their glamorised, iconic representation in the mass-media. Highlights of the exhibition include portraits of Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Mao, and Warhol himself – all idealised figures whose ‘image’ transcends their private, personal identity.

Seen in the context of the Byzantine & Christian Museum’s historic icons, Warhol’s modern ‘icons’ are presented as the outcome of a complex metamor-phosis in which the real has been transformed into a complex but glorious abstraction.

The Byzantine & Christian Museum, Athens, was founded in 1914. The collection represents Greek art from the 4th to the 19th century and contains the world’s pre-eminent collection of Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons.

To learn more: http://www.warhol-icon.com/