Till earth leans over

An exhibition of new works by John McSorley to be held at the Artz Yard Gallery between 30th May and 25th July 2009.

Now an annual event at Artz Yard Gallery, Portaferry, John McSorley’s
eagerly awaited 2009 exhibition of new work will not disappoint. Followers of
his work will recognise his continuing love affair with the nocturne. In the
West of Ireland, a river dances with the reflected light of a glorious sunset,
while a delicate crescent moon, accompanied here by Jupiter and Venus, rises
gracefully in the darkening sky. more:

Onomatopoeia

Here's something for the kids - a poster by Deborah Grumet - which can be purchased from ABCs of Art

Toffoli

Poster from a French holiday.

Above is a photo I uploaded using my new mobile phone - as you can see I haven't quite got the hang of it but practice makes perfect. Below is an edited version of the poster, which hangs in my bedroom.

STOP

Strawberries,revolution and scandalous behaviour.

Blueboat has a post about strawberries on her blog and a dilemma about their disposal, which set me off googling to see if you can do anything else with them other than making jam. In wikipedia I found a reference to Madam Tallien bathing in them which set me off googling at a tangent and on Big Frank Dickinson's blog I came across this:

She is remembered for her involvement in the Liberal cause in France, which led
to her imprisonment, and threat of the guillotine. .... she scandalized society by showing up at the Paris Opera wearing a sleeveless white dress and no underwear underneath! Talleyrand famously remarked on that: “It is not possible to exhibit oneself more sumptuously!” That is seizing the moment! And, of course she did bathe in strawberries - to good effect, it appeared.

Now there is a fashion that I would like to see revived (c:

....... and now some fun facts about strawberries courtesy of Michigan Dept of Agriculture:

• Strawberries are the only fruit with seeds on the outside.
• The average strawberry has 200 seeds.
• The ancient Romans believed that strawberries alleviated symptoms of melancholy, fainting, all inflammations, fevers, throat infections, kidney stones, bad breath, attacks of gout, and diseases of the blood, liver and spleen.
• To symbolize perfection and righteousness, medieval stone masons carved strawberry designs on altars and around the tops of pillars in churches and cathedrals.
• In parts of Bavaria, country folk still practice the annual rite each spring of tying small baskets of wild strawberries to the horns of their cattle as an offering to elves. They believe that the elves, who are passionately fond of strawberries, will help to produce healthy calves and an abundance of milk in return.
• Madame Tallien, a prominent figure at the court of the Emperor Napoleon, was famous for bathing in the juice of fresh strawberries. She used 22 pounds per basin. Needless to say, she did not bathe daily.
• The fruit size of the very early strawberries was very small.
• Strawberries are the first fruit to ripen in the spring.
• There is a museum in Belgium just for strawberries.
• Strawberries are a member of the rose family.

The MDA has a lot of recipes for strawberries (among other things) including Sweet-Hot Strawberry BBQ Sauce

Art is in the eye of the beholder

Finally, Belfast gets its own pavement artist. But, if you take a closer look, you can see that it looks a bit fanciful. He must be wearing those rose tinted spectacles I keep hearing about (c:

Modern Irish Art 1960s - 1990s

What's This?

... well your guess is as good as mine. Is it art masquerading as a lamp post or a lamp post masquerading as art .... or just a huge lump of useless tin? I know where my money goes.

The Burghers of Calais

You have probably recognised this sculpture by Auguste Rodin as 'The Burghers of Calais' - it does not stand in Calais, as you might think, but in Victoria Tower Gardens, London. Under French law no more than twelve casts of this piece were permitted after Rodin’s death. The London casting, purchased by the British Government in 1911, is one of them. The original statue still stands in Calais.

Completed in 1888. It serves as a monument to an occurrence in 1347 during the Hundred Years' War, when Calais, an important French port on the English Channel, was under siege by the English for over a year.

The story goes that England's Edward III, after a victory in the Battle of Crécy, laid siege to Calais and Philip VI of France ordered the city to hold out at all costs. Philip failed to lift the siege and starvation eventually forced the city to parlay for surrender. Edward offered to spare the people of the city if any six of its top leaders would surrender themselves to him, presumably to be executed. Edward demanded that they walk out almost naked and wearing nooses around their necks and be carrying the keys to the city and castle. One of the wealthiest of the town leaders, Eustache de Saint Pierre, volunteered first and five other burghers soon followed suit and they stripped down to their breeches. Saint Pierre led this envoy of emaciated volunteers to the city gates and it is this moment and this poignant mix of defeat, heroic self-sacrifice and the facing of imminent mortality that Rodin captures in these figures, which are scaled somewhat larger than life.

In history, though the burghers expected to be executed, their lives were spared by the intervention of England's Queen, Philippa of Hainault, who persuaded her husband by saying it would be a bad omen for her unborn child. Wikipedia

The Last Supper

A 16 billion pixel image of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper has been posted on the internet, giving art lovers a detailed view of the 15th Century work.
The image is 1,600 times more detailed than those taken with a typical 10 million pixel digital camera.
Experts will be able to see segments as though just centimetres away and examine otherwise unavailable details.

Reconciliation

This statue, entitled 'Reconciliation', can be found in the grounds of Stormont and carved into the stone are names of cities such as Berlin and Hiroshima but not Belfast. Hardly surprising really since I don't think the word 'reconciliation' appears in the vocabulary of the majority of those employed up in the 'big house'.

MORE HERE:

Autumn leaves

The sculpture 'Sheep on the road' by Deborah Brown at the entrance to the Waterfront Hall

Arthur Square Artwork Competition

The Department for Social Development’s Streets Ahead Project has invited a number of internationally renowned artists to submit proposals for an artwork for Arthur Square in Belfast city centre.

Arthur Square is a key location and will be a major point of access to the Victoria Square Development. The artwork will provide the finishing touch to the refurbishment of Arthur Square by creating an iconic structure that will be recognised as special to the revival of the city centre.

The final selection of the Artwork will be decided by public vote, which will run from Monday the 22nd October to Sunday 4th November 2007.

This is your opportunity to have your say. If you have already seen the artworks that have made the final list then go ahead and vote for your favourite artwork online.

Dancing Tree
Phoenix Rising
Spirit of Belfast

Unfortunately there is not an option for - 'none of the above'

Wednesday 24th October 22:52 - I have just read the artists' descriptions: what a load of codswallop!

Junk Art

Here's another of those ridiculous stories :

An artist is turning a year's worth of unwanted junk mail into a sculpture in her
garden.

Actually, all it is is a pile of junk mail stuck on a metal spike and somebody has decided to call it art !!!

The Crack - update

Here's an update to my previous post:

Doris Salcedo, the artist responsible for the latest Tate Modern Turbine hall commission, has said she wants visitors to look down when they encounter her work and engage in quiet contemplation - rather than be sidetracked by the space's spectacular architecture.
Some, however, have failed to look down carefully enough.

The work - a long, sometimes foot-wide fissure that runs the entire length of the hall - was unveiled at a private view on Monday night, when someone fell into what is becoming known as "Doris's crack" (its official title is Shibboleth).

"We saw the first poor victim, a young woman who went into it with both feet up to just below her knees. She had to be dragged out by her friends," said one onlooker.
"Unbelievably, as we watched to see whether she was OK, an older woman deliberately stepped on it (she later told us, amazingly, that she thought the crack was painted on the floor) lurched forward and landed on the ground. She had a sore wrist to show for it."
Guardian:

.... what can I say? She's a woman (c:

Vandals punch hole in Monet

Vandals have broken into the Musée d’Orsay and punched a hole in Claude Monet's "Le Pont d'Argenteuil".

A surveillance camera caught a group of four to five apparently drunk people entering the Paris museum early yesterday morning.
An alarm sounded and the group fled, but not before putting a four-inch tear in the painting, Christine Albanel, the culture minister, said.
No arrests were immediately made in the latest in a series of acts of vandalism and thefts at cultural sites in France.

After attempting to force open other doors, the intruders managed to get in through a back door, "even though it had big bolts," Ms Albanel said. The painting was hanging on the ground floor with other Impressionist masterpieces.
The painting has a horizontal tear that exposes threads of canvas. It was visibly punched in, perhaps with a fist. The minister said the painting can be restored, but she deplored the damage.

Telegraph:

UPDATE:

French police have made five arrests over an attack on a painting by Claude Monet in Paris, France's AFP news agency says, quoting judicial sources.

A scam disguised as art .

Sculptor Doris Salcedo has unveiled a hole at the Tate Modern - the latest installation in the art gallery's Turbine Hall.
The work, entitled Shibboleth 2007, runs the full 167 metres of the cavernous hall on London's South Bank.

It begins as a crack then widens and deepens as it snakes across the room.

Colombian artist Salcedo said the work - on display to the public until April next year - symbolised racial hatred and division in society.

"I always try to relate my work to tragedy," she said.
BBC:

The real tragedy is that the Tate Modern class this as 'art' ...... and read about another piece of so-called 'art' here:

Shibboleth is any language usage indicative of one's social or regional origin, or more broadly, any practice that identifies members of a group.

So that means this work represents paddies - because they're the only ones I know who dig holes in the ground (c: ... and we'll have no cracks about builder's cracks!!

Salcedo claims the work took her over a year to make, and apparently spent the past five weeks installing it in the Tate.

But she refused to reveal how it was achieved.

"What is important is the meaning of the piece. The making of it is not important," she said, adding that the work was "bottomless... as deep as humanity". What a load of excrement!!

She should have employed McAlpines - they would have done it in half the time AND erected a block of apartments beside it.

*********************************************************

Here's another load of rubbish:

A woman who says she was so overcome with passion for a valuable painting on display in France, has been charged with criminal damage after kissing it.
The immaculate white canvas so attracted Sam Rindy she smudged it with her lipstick, saying later she had wanted to make it even more beautiful.
The 3x2m (9x6-foot) painting by US artist Cy Twombly is valued at more than $2m (£970,000).

$2m for a white canvas!! You can not be serious.
It gets better ....

Ms Rindy, herself an artist, is due to appear in court on 16 August.
Staff at the Collection Lambert museum in the southern French city of Avignon alerted police after the incident on Thursday afternoon and she was arrested as she was walking out.
"I left a kiss," she told La Provence newspaper on leaving the police station.
"A red stain remained on the canvas... This red stain is testimony to this moment, to the power of art." BBC:

Here kitty ...

A nice piece of garage door art from our trip to France.

Emily Carr

I mentioned a book recently by Susan Vreeland called 'The Forest Lover' about a Canadian artist named Emily Carr - these are two of her paintings and you can see more here:

I love Susan Vreeland ....

.... well to be precise, I love her books. A few years ago when everybody was raving about 'The Girl With the Pearl Earring' I came across 'The Girl in Hyacinth Blue' and, though they are not similar in content, they do have the common link of an artist and his art (i.e. Dutch painter Vermeer). I think Susan Vreeland's book is far superior to Tracy Chevalier's and is written with more understanding of not only the artist and his art but of the people touched and moved by it.

Other books I have since read are 'The Passion of Artemisia' (also a wonderful and powerful film) about Artemisia Gentileschi, the most famous female artist in the history of Italy, and 'Life Studies' a collection of short stories not primarily about the artists but the people on the periphery - their lovers, servants, children and neighbours.

I am currently reading 'The Forest Lover' about Canadian artist Emily Carr and again I am carried along by Susan Vreeland's narrative - I feel the characters come alive and I can share in Emily's passion for painting and her love of the primitive. Each chapter is like an adventure, a step into the unknown, and I relish each new experience. Susan Vreeland is playing with my emotions and I am loving every minute of it.