Category Archives: art

fabio selvatici – hope

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Fabio Selvatici – “Hope”
2010, from The Obscure Series
Photomanipulation

Born in Ferrara, Italy, in 1987, Fabio Selvatici is completely self-taught. Although his surrealistic images may appear to be ultra-realist paintings, they are actually intricately beautiful photo-manipulations. He uses traditional means such as acrylics and ink over previously digitally-altered images.

On his official website, Fabio says, about his use of both traditional and digital media, that “the combination of these techniques allows me to create effects of visual impact that act directly on the physicality of human subjects depicted, emphasizing them in a Gothic, deliberately grotesque and extreme style, invoking the inner drives of the human soul, the travails of the psyche and their inadequacy in relation to the claustrophobic environment that oppresses them.” (thanks to Golden Wolves for this information in English.) 

Explore Selvatici’s work further on his official site (in Italian).

tracey emin

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“Art is an extended act away from the being, art is something else. Not everything can be art, and just because you’re an artist doesn’t mean everything you touch is art. You have to decide and know what is art, and you have  to be separate from yourself.” -Tracey Emin

When I first came across the art of Tracey Emin, I wasn´t so sure how to feel about the way she sells herself/her art. She seemed to be so commercially inclined and I sort of judged her work, immediately questioning the integrity of her process and her pieces. The more I investigate her art, the more I fall in love with it.  It´s not only the confessional quality her works possess that resonates with me, it´s just the honesty, that raw, ugly honesty that most are so afraid to show.

“Emin exposes herself, her hopes, humiliations, failures and successes in an incredibly direct manner. Often tragic and frequently humorous, it is as if by telling her story and weaving it into the fiction of her art she somehow transforms it.” read more about Emin here.

Her website.

I’ve Got It All, 2000

Tracey Emin is almost always portrayed as a Diana-esque femme tragique. It’s rare to get a glimpse of the happy, successful, confident person she’s become. I’ve Got It All is a transient crowning glory: a shameless, two-fingers up to her critics. Emin’s triumphed over all, and has money up the whazoo to boot!

Installation including 14 paintings, 78 drawings, 5 body prints, various painted and personal items, furniture, CDs, newspapers, magazines, kitchen and food supplies. 1996

In 1974, Joseph Beuys did a performance called I Love America, and America Loves Me where he lived in a gallery with a wild coyote for seven days as a symbolic act of reconciliation with nature. In 1996, Tracey Emin lived in a locked room in a gallery for fourteen days, with nothing but a lot of empty canvases and art materials, in an attempt to reconcile herself with paintings. Viewed through a series of wide-angle lenses embedded in the walls, Emin could be watched, stark naked, shaking off her painting demons. Starting by making images like the artists she really admired (i.e. Egon Schiele, Edvard Munch, Yves Klein), Emin’s two-week art-therapy session resulted in a massive outpouring of autobiographical images, and the discovery of a style all her own. The room was extracted in its entirety, and now exists as an installation work.

Three above from Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

After My Abortion XII (1990) watercolour on paper, 10 x 8 in (25.5 x 20.4 cm)My bed, 1998

A consummate storyteller, Tracey Emin engages the viewer with her candid exploration of universal emotions. Well-known for her confessional art, Tracey Emin reveals intimate details from her life to engage the viewer with her expressions of universal emotions. Her ability to integrate her work and personal life enables Emin to establish an intimacy with the viewer.

Tracey shows us her own bed, in all its embarrassing glory. Empty booze bottles, fag butts, stained sheets, worn panties: the bloody aftermath of a nervous breakdown. By presenting her bed as art, Tracey Emin shares her most personal space, revealing she’s as insecure and imperfect as the rest of the world.

motel7 – “daydreamers”

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Solo Exhibition at 34FineArt, Cape Town

16 October 2012 – 10 November 2012

After her initial solo exhibition,Tears and Castles, at 34 Long Fine Art in 2009, Motel7 left South Africa to work in Europe and America. Having returned to South Africa she has reclaimed her position on the streets and in the Gallery environment.

Having worked in traditional mediums from an early age, Motel7 moved through the ranks of graffiti to street art and like many international artists, such as Banksy, Mr. Brainwash, Miss Van, Blek le Rat, D*Face and Nick Walker, she has secured her position as an acclaimed urban contemporary artist. Since then her work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions, including the Basel Art Fairs, as well as galleries in Amsterdam and Los Angeles. Motel7 continues to hone her skills in urban spaces whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself.

Increasingly street artists occupy both urban and fine art environments. In cities like Cape Town, where street art is still illegal, artworks seldom remain on the walls for long enough to be fully appreciated before being cleaned off or defaced. Ironically, while the value of works in urban spaces is often overlooked, within the gallery environment these same works are approached with a more appreciative eye.

Daydreamers, Motel7’s second solo show, affirms the ease with which she straddles the divide between urban and gallery spaces – where the traditional process of work progressing from gallery environment to museum or public commission, is reversed. The exhibition is presented in her unique visual idiom, built-up over years of working in a challenging environment. The seemingly juxtaposed images of sculls, toys, fruit and sweets are complimented by the vintage quality of the paintings… it’s all about symbolizing daydreaming and nostalgia and the past.

Street art and graffiti are closely associated, but are often regarded as vandalism – evidence of urban decay – in stark contrast to gallery art, which is seen as the epitome of artistic achievement. Daydreamers demonstrates that it is not these works themselves which are different, but rather the contexts within which they are viewed.

Don’t miss the opening reception on 16 October. Find out more HERE.

helgé janssen – what stands between this and that? (2010)

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“CATALYST” – masked dance movement piece
Helgé Janssen/Gisele Stafford, Durban beachfront, 1984
Photograph: Peter Hart-Davies

what stands between this and that?
what stands between this and that?
what stands between this and that?

a look?
a glance?
a second fact?
a psychology?
an ideology?
a whim?
a schism?
a hollow dream?
a friend who intervenes?
a plissé
that would rather be
ironed out flat?

what stands between this and that?
what stands between this and that?
what stands between this and that?

a denial?
a pyre?
a burning sphere?
a time?
a place?
a thwarted mess?
a second guess?
a stall for time
that saves you grace?
a space between
a furtive glimpse?
a risk not worth taking?

what stands between this and that?
what stands between this and that?
what stands between this and that?

life as a rehearsal?
a chance to forget?
another escape?
the art of make-up?
a drowning of sorrows?
an always tomorrow?
a never yesterday?
somebody’s off day?
the centre lost?
the plot in recess?
just another day
without redress?

is this a life or just a mistake?
is this a life or just a mistake?
is this a life or just a mistake?

Thanks to Helgé for sharing this poem. Keep abreast of what this multi-talented and influential Durban artist has up his next immaculately designed sleeve HERE.

martha graham on artists (in a letter to agnes de mille)

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“there is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and will be lost. the world will not have it. it is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. it’s your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

you do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. you have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. keep the channel open. no artist is pleased. there is no satisfaction whatever at any time. there is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

from http://kagablog.com/

“lost girls” by alan moore, illustrated by melinda gebbie

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“When I first started writing comics for adults, I found myself forever needing to explain that, no, I wasn’t writing those kind of adult stories.

The boundary between pornography and erotica is an ambiguous one, and it changes depending on where you’re standing. For some, perhaps, it’s a matter of whatever turns you on (my erotica, your pornography), for some the distinction occurs in class (i.e. erotica is pornography for rich people). Perhaps it’s also something to do with the means of distribution – internet pornography is unquestionably porn, while an Edwardian publication, on creamy paper, bought by connoisseurs, part works bound into expensive volumes, must be erotica.

Alan Moore knows his words.”

Read the rest of this review by Neil Gaiman here

Download Lost Girls here

moon and flying snow

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Beautiful fight scene between Moon (Zhang Ziyi) and Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) in the yellow forest from the extended version of the movie “Hero”

Hero was first released in China on October 24, 2002. At that time, it was the most expensive project and the highest-grossing motion picture in Chinese film history.

drawings by chaos magician austin osman spare

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“London has harboured many curious characters, but few more curious than the artist and visionary Austin Osman Spare (1886–1956). A controversial enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world, the young Spare was hailed as a genius and a new Aubrey Beardsley, while George Bernard Shaw reportedly said, “Spare’s medicine is too strong for the average man”.

But Spare was never made for worldly success and he went underground, falling out of the gallery system to live in poverty and obscurity south of the river. Absorbed in occultism and sorcery, voyaging into inner dimensions and surrounding himself with cats and familiar spirits, he continued to produce extraordinary art while developing a magical philosophy of pleasure, obsession, and the subjective nature of reality.”

I particularly adore his automatic drawings and his drawings of robust, strong women. He was certainly a figure drawing master.

His writings about magic was groundbreaking. Read his Book of Pleasure here.

His writing on automatic drawing here.

kahlil gibran to mary haskell (1908)

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October 2, 1908
14 Avenue du Maine
Paris

My dear Mary – I had a long rest in the country with Syrian friends, a rich man with a great heart and a woman with both a beautiful soul and face. They both love poetry and poets. The town in which they live is like a large garden divided into little gardens by narrow paths. From a distance the houses with red roofs look like a handful of corals scattered on a piece of green velvet.

I am painting, or I am learning how to paint. It will take me a long time to paint as I want to, but it is beautiful to feel the growth of one’s own vision of things. There are times when I leave work with the feelings of a child who is put to bed early. Do you not remember, dear Mary, my telling you that I understand people and things through my sense of hearing, and that *sound* comes first to my soul? Now, dear Mary, I am beginning to understand things and people through my eyes. My memory seems to keep the shapes and colours of personalities and objects…

… It is almost midnight. The woman with the sweet voice, in the opposite studio, is no longer singing her sad Russian songs. The silence is profound. Good night, dear Mary. A thousand good nights from
Kahlil

November 8, 1908
Paris

When I am unhappy, dear Mary, I read your letters. When the mist overwhelms the “I” in me, I take two or three letters out of the little box and reread them. They remind me of my true self. They make me overlook all that is not high and beautiful in life. Each and every one of us must have a resting place somewhere. The resting place of my soul is a beautiful grove where my knowledge of you lives.

And now, I am wrestling with colour: The strife is terrible, one of us must triumph! I can almost hear you saying, “And what about drawing, Kahlil?” and Kahlil, with a thirst in his voice says, “Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.”

The professors in the academy say, “Do not make the model more beautiful than she is,” and my soul whispers, “O if you could only paint the model as beautiful as she really is.” Now what shall I do, dear Mary? Shall I please the professors or my soul? The dear old men know a great deal, but the soul is much nearer.

It is rather late, and I shall go to bed now, with many thoughts in my heart. Good night, dear Mary. God bless you always.
Kahlil

From Beloved Prophet – the love letters of Kahlil Gibran & Mary Haskell (1972)

sappho

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Sappho – Charles-August Mengin
Oil on canvas, 1877

THE MUSES

Hither now, O Muses, leaving the golden
House of God unseen in the azure spaces,
Come and breathe on bosom and brow and kindle
Song like the sunglow;

Come and lift my shaken soul to the sacred
Shadow cast by Helicon’s rustling forests;
Sweep on wings of flame from the middle ether,
Seize and uplift me;

Thrill my heart that throbs with unwonted fervor,
Chasten mouth and throat with immortal kisses,
Till I yield on maddening heights the very
Breath of my body.

~ from The Poems of Sappho: An Interpretative Rendition into English, translated by John Myers O’Hara, 1870-1944.

More about her life and poetry : The Tenth Muse

friedrich hölderlin – out for a walk

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The margins of the forest are beautiful,
as if painted onto the green slopes.
I walk around, and sweet peace
rewards me for the thorns
in my heart, when the mind has grown
dark, for right from the start
art and thinking have cost it pain.
There are lovely pictures in the valley,
for example the gardens and trees,
and the narrow footbridge, and the brook,
hardly visible. How beautifully
the landscape shines, cheerfully distant,
like a splendid picture, where I come
to visit when the weather is mild.
A kindly divinity leads us on at first
with blue, then prepares clouds,
shaped like gray domes, with
searing lightning and rolling thunder,
then comes the loveliness of the fields,
and beauty wells forth from
the source of the primal image.

the work of nan goldin

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As a teenager in Boston in the 1960s, then in New York starting in the 1970s, Nan Goldin has taken intensely personal, spontaneous, sexual, and transgressive photographs of her family, friends, and lovers. In 1979 she presented her first slideshow in a New York nightclub, and her richly colored, snapshotlike photographs were soon heralded as a groundbreaking contribution to fine art photography. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency—the name she gave her ever-evolving show—eventually grew into a forty-five-minute multimedia presentation of more than 900 photographs, accompanied by a musical soundtrack.

ulricke lourens – reconstructed restriction 05

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This is one of a series of eight videos made by Ulricke Lourens for a Master’s degree in Fine Arts. It is a focused look at the body being corsetted and the tension that occurs. The series documents the practice of waist training, exploring the notion of culture imprinted onto the body and reflected through the skin. Watch more on Ulricke’s Youtube channel.

into at unyazi 3 – durban, 14 september 18h00

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INTO:
“expressing movement or action with the result that someone or something becomes enclosed or surrounded by something else” (Oxford Dictionary of English) is a collaboration between three artists – two sonic, one visual. Randomly morphing field recordings are the inspiration for the sonic duo’s improvisations while the visual artist’s work is manipulated by software which responds to what is played on the two instruments.”

Tomorrow evening my talented visual artist friend, Zara-Moon Arthur, performs at Unyazi 3, the festival of experimental electronica happening in Durban from 12 – 15 September 2012, along with her husband, bassist and field recordist Brydon Bolton, and Frank Mallows on vibraphone as the trio, “into”. Here are a few stills from Moon’s blog – check out this link for more. Look out for into’s performance if you are attending  Unyazi 3 – it promises to be mesmerising.

man ray – l’étoile de mer

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Based on the poetry of Robert Desnos

Almost all of the scenes in this film are shot either off a mirror like the final shot, or through diffused and textured glass.

Les dents des femmes sont des objets si charmants… (Women’s teeth are such charming objects…)

… qu’ on ne devrait les voir qu’ en rêve ou à l’instant de l’amour. (… that one ought to see them only in a dream or in the instant of love.)

Si belle! Cybèle? (So beautiful! Cybèle?)

Nous sommes à jamais perdus dans le désert de l’éternèbre. (We are forever lost in the desert of eternal darkness.)

Qu’elle est belle (How beautiful she is)

“Après tout” (“After all”)

Si les fleurs étaient en verre (If the flowers were in glass)

Belle, belle comme une fleur de verre (Beautiful, beautiful like a flower of glass)
Belle comme une fleur de chair (Beautiful like a flower of flesh)
Il faut battre les morts quand ils sont froids. (One must beat the dead while they are cold.)

Les murs de la Santé (The walls of the Santé)
Et si tu trouves sur cette terre une femme à l’amour sincère… (And if you find on this earth a woman of sincere love…)
Belle comme une fleur de feu (Beautiful like a flower of fire)
Le soleil, un pied à l’étrier, niche un rossignol dans un voile de crêpe. (The sun, one foot in the stirrup, nestles a nightingale in a veil of crepe.)

Vous ne rêvez pas (You are not dreaming)

Qu’elle était belle (How beautiful she was)
Qu’elle est belle (How beautiful she is)