Wayne Thiebaud

Wayne Thiebaud (born Mesa, Arizona, November 23, 1920) is an American painter whose most famous works are of cakes, pastries, boots, toilets, toys and lipsticks. His last name is pronounced "Tee-bo." He is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, however, his works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate the works of the classic pop artists. He has also been seen, due to his true to life representations, as a predecessor to photorealism. Thiebaud uses heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects, and the well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements are almost always included in his work. Although he painted scenes of San Francisco and worked in Northern California, Thiebaud does not categorize himself as part of the Bay Area Figurative Movement in California in the latter part of the 20th century.[1]

Source: Wayne Thiebaud Wikipedia s page

Alien VS Predator

Alien Vs Predator (Shower)
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Merci Thomas!!!

Thomas s blog

"Youth without youth", directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Youth Without Youth is a 2007 film by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novella of the same name by Romanian author Mircea Eliade.

Youth Without Youth (Romanian: Tinereţe fără tinereţe) is a 1976 novella by Romanian author Mircea Eliade. It follows the life of Dominic Matei, an elderly Bucharest intellectual who experiences a cataclysmic event that allows him to live a new life with startling intellectual capacity. In 2007, it was adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola, also titled Youth Without Youth.

Source: wikipedia

Alberto Giacometti

Born in Borgonovo, now part of the Swiss municipality Stampa, near the Italian border, Giacometti moved to Geneva to attend the School of Fine Arts.

In 1922 he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, an associate of Auguste Rodin. It was there that Giacometti experimented with cubism and surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading surrealist sculptors. Among his associates were Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso and Balthus.
Alberto Giacometti, Cat, 1954, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Alberto Giacometti, Cat, 1954, Metropolitan Museum of Art

From 1936 to 1940 Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the model's gaze, followed by a unique artistic phase in which his statues became stretched out; their limbs elongated. Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisioned through his unique view of reality, he often carved until they were as thin as nails and reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes, much to his consternation. A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you, "he would make your head look like the blade of a knife." After his marriage his tiny sculptures became larger, but the larger they grew, the thinner they became. Giacometti said that the final result represented the sensation he felt when he looked at a woman.

His paintings underwent a parallel procedure. The figures appear isolated, are severely attenuated, and are the result of continuous reworking. Subjects were frequently revisited: one of his favorite models was his brother Diego Giacometti.[1]

Giacometti was a key player in the Surrealist Movement, but his work resists easy categorization. Some describe it as formalist, others argue it is expressionist or otherwise having to do with what Deleuze calls 'blocs of sensation' (as in Deleuze's analysis of Francis Bacon). Even after his excommunication from the Surrealist group, while the intention of his sculpting was usually imitation, the end products were an expression of his emotional response to the subject. He attempted to create renditions of his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen. He once said that he was sculpting not the human figure but "the shadow that is cast."

Scholar William Barrett in Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1962), argues that the attenuated forms of Giacometti's figures reflect the view of 20th century modernism and existentialism that modern life is increasingly devoid of meaning and empty. "All the sculptures of today, like those of the past, will end one day in pieces... So it is important to fashion ones work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life."

Source: Giacometti wikipedia s page

Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania; as a teenager he revered Salvador Dalí, to the extent of visiting him at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City. Koons attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art, and studied painting. After college he worked as a Wall Street commodities broker, whilst establishing himself as an artist. He gained recognition in the 1980s, and subsequently set up a factory-like studio in a SoHo loft on the corner of Houston and Broadway in New York. This had over 30 staff, each assigned to a different aspect of producing his work—in a similar mode to both Andy Warhol's Factory and many Renaissance artists.

Koons' early work was in the form of conceptual sculpture, one of the best-known being Three Ball 50/50 Tank, 1985, consisting of three basket balls floating in water, which half-fills a glass tank.

Koons carefully cultivated his public person by employing an image consultant— something that at the time was unheard of for a contemporary artist. As an artwork in their own right Koons placed full page advertisements in the main international art magazine featuring photographs of himself surrounded by the trappings of success. During personal appearances and interviews Koons began to refer to himself in the third person.

Koons then moved on to "Statuary", the large stainless-steel blowups of toys, and then a series "Banality", which culminated in 1988 with Michael Jackson and Bubbles—stated to be the world's largest ceramic—a life-size gold-leaf plated statue of the sitting singer cuddling Bubbles, his pet chimpanzee. Three years later it sold at Sotheby's New York as Lot 7655 for $5,600,000, tripling Koons' previous sale record. The statue was acquired in 2002 by the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo, Norway, and is exhibited there.

Source: wikipedia Jeff Koons s page
- Jeff Koons official website

"Eastern Promises", directed by David Cronenberg

The mysterious and charismatic Russian-born Nikolai Luzhin is a driver for one of London's most notorious organized crime families of Eastern European origin. The family itself is part of the Vory V Zakone criminal brotherhood. Headed by Semyon, whose courtly charm as the welcoming proprietor of the plush Trans-Siberian restaurant impeccably masks a cold and brutal core, the family's fortunes are tested by Semyon's volatile son and enforcer, Kirill, who is more tightly bound to Nikolai than to his own father. But Nikolai's carefully maintained existence is jarred once he crosses paths at Christmastime with Anna Khitrova, a midwife at a North London hospital. Anna is deeply affected by the desperate situation of a young teenager who dies while giving birth to a baby. Anna resolves to try to trace the baby's lineage and relatives. The girl's personal diary also survives her; it is written in Russian, and Anna seeks answers in it. Anna's mother Helen does not discourage her, but Anna's irascible Russian-born uncle Stepan urges caution. He is right to do so; by delving into the diary, Anna has accidentally unleashed the full fury of the Vory. With Semyon and Kirill closing ranks and Anna pressing her inquiries, Nikolai unexpectedly finds his loyalties divided. The family tightens its grip on him; who can, or should, he trust? Several lives - including his own - hang in the balance as a harrowing chain of murder, deceit, and retribution reverberates through the darkest corners of both the family and London itself.

Source: IMDB

New York rafle la mise sur l’art contemporain

«Diamond (Blue)», de Jeff Koons, vendu pour plus de 8 millions d’euros (Christie’s).

Après les déceptions des ventes impressionnistes et modernes, les acheteurs, souvent américains, montrent clairement leur enthousiasme pour les stars d’aujourd’hui.

Est-ce le vent du boulet, le pressentiment que le marché de l’art ne peut continuer à surfer impunément sur de telles sommes et va tomber de haut au premier ressac financier, comme un joueur qui mise trop gros ? Ou est-ce la confirmation que l’art contemporain révolutionne la société et attire désormais tous les publics du monde à son théâtre ?

Il y avait foule comme jamais à New York pour cette semaine de ventes contemporaines qui a effacé sous une avalanche de records (16 chez Christie’s mardi soir, 17 chez Sotheby’s le lendemain) les réserves de la semaine dernière (nos éditions du 9 novembre). En trois soirées chauffées à blanc, l’art contemporain, qui était un marginal à petits prix il y a seulement dix ans, a imposé ses valeurs toujours plus à la hausse et ses favoris disputés à coups de millions de dollars, comme les stars hollywoodiennes d’un casting international.

Faites vos jeux, la banque ne saute pas cette semaine ! Forte de son tabac impressionniste et moderne tout neuf (349,9 M$), Christie’s a ouvert le feu avec la collection Allan Stone, lundi soir (52,42 M$, 90 % de lots vendus et 94 % en valeur). Un premier round d’un optimisme bluffant qui a été marqué par les records pour le peintre acidulé de San Francisco, Wayne Thiebaud (4,5 M$), pour le broyeur de belles mécaniques, John Chamberlain (2,84 M$), et pour le Russe de New York, le peintre mélancolique John Graham (1,6 M$), trois artistes aux couleurs de l’Amérique. La preuve, si l’on en cherchait encore, que l’argent est toujours là, comme l’océan Atlantique qui sépare nos deux cultures si différentes face à l’avenir. L’argent est ici le moteur de l’action, prêt à investir l’art coûte que coûte, quitte à couronner parfois des artistes jugés secondaires en Europe.
Seize nouveaux records

Mardi soir, la maison de François Pinault enfonçait le clou avec son Evening Sale pourtant lourde de garanties, ce poison galopant des ventes aux enchères qui pose la question des bénéfices réels à l’heure des bilans (325 M$ avec 93 % des lots vendus et 94 % en valeur). Un succès spectaculaire aux multiples facettes travaillées comme le diamant bleu en acier laqué de Jeff Koons posé devant l’entrée de Rockefeller Plaza, vendu par l’éditeur de Cologne, Benedict Taschen, et acheté au prix record de 11,8 M$ par Larry Gagosian, marchand de Jeff Koons et roi sibyllin de Manhattan. Parmi les seize nouveaux records établis ce soir-là sous le marteau dynamique de Christopher Burge, il y avait des légendes comme Lucian Freud (19,3 M$) ou Richard Prince, le cow-boy du détournement plastique intronisé au Guggenheim (6,089 M$ pour sa Piney Woods Nurse), mais aussi quantité de nouvelles gloires comme le Chinois de Tiananmen Square, Zhang Xiaogang (3,96 M$), ou la Californienne Liza Lou qui réinvente le rêve américain (337 000 $ son Autoportrait en paillettes).

Mercredi soir, Sotheby’s l’Américaine oubliait tous les mauvais jours et la facture sévère des invendus impressionnistes et modernes de la semaine passée, en réalisant sa plus haute vente aux enchères de sa longue histoire : 315,9 M$, avec 91,6 % de lots vendus et 98,2 % en valeur.

Ironie du sort ? Ce triomphe alimenté par le meilleur du maître Francis Bacon (45,96 M$ sa corrida magistrale et 33,08 M$ son autoportrait si charnel et poignant) doit beaucoup aussi au cœur magenta de Jeff Koons. Qui eût cru pareil triomphe pour l’énorme faveur en acier laqué comme celle accrochée à l’entrée du Palazzo Grassi par le grand rival François Pinault pour inaugurer sa collection à Venise, en 2006 ? C’est encore Larry Gagosian qui a emporté à 23,56 M$ cette vision pop et surdimensionnée du quotidien américain le plus kitsch.
Le monde des enchères

Alléchés à l’idée d’une crise, nombre de titres peu portés sur l’art et sa cote avaient dépêché leurs correspondants politiques à ces événements new-yorkais que sont les grandes ventes contemporaines. Berlinois, Anglais, certains découvraient le monde des enchères, jeu d’apparences codé comme les échecs, et devaient céder les premières loges aux hordes de TV venus filmer le phénomène comme la montée des marches au Festival de Cannes. Les amateurs de people avaient leur butin : l’acteur Hugh Grant reparti avec un maigre sourire après avoir vendu pour 23,5 M$ chez Christie’s sa Liz de Warhol sur fond turquoise, achetée seulement 3,5 M$ en 2001 ; Larry Gagosian suçant sa Chupa Chups rouge avant d’enchérir en milliardaire ; le couturier Marc Jacobs, statue mode avec ses cheveux courts bleu nuit, qui répondait par sa présence aux attaques du New York Times qui titrait «Loving an hating Marc Jacobs» («Aimer un Marc Jacobs détestable») en une de son cahier styles hier. L’art, quel cinéma !

Par Valérie Duponchelle, le 16/11/2007

Source: lefigaro.fr
New York rafle la mise sur l’art contemporain