Luminous Landscapes

Sag Harbor artist April Gornik's exhibition at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington presents twelve huge canvases, including Suspended Sky (2004) (above) that blur the boundaries between representation and imagination to produce works of mystery, luminosity and power.

In this collection paintings inspired by trips to the Caribbean, China, and Namibia are shown alongside landscapes of New Mexico and Long Island. In each piece Gornik plays with the juxtaposition of light, in the form of water, moon/sunlight or a lightening strike and dark weight: rocks, sand dunes, pounding seas or a threatening sky, contrasting calm and menace in a way that provokes an almost physical reaction to each painting.

From Turning Waterfall (1997), where the viewer seems to be enveloped by a swirling cascade of silken water, pinned on either side by foreboding rock walls, to Mirror Lake, China (2004), where we gaze from the side of the lake upon an ethereal hazy landscape, the sun only a reflection in the water, we are compelled to be engaged in her landscapes.

The Luminous Landscapes of April Gornik runs through July 5, 2009. In conjunction with the show, Heckscher Museum's Voices and Visions series will feature a lecture/gallery talk with the artist on June 18 at 7pm. Admission to the talk $5.

Enameled Copper Dish

I don't usually buy souvenirs when I'm on vacation but I picked up this copper bowl by artist Susan Funes on our trip to Buenos Aires last year. It's unique, modern and fits my decor perfectly. I love the depth and cloud effect of the brown tones that contrasts with the regular criss-cross pattern of the royal blue lines. At the intersection of each line there's a tiny ochre dot - a tiny detail that adds so much to the finished design. Enjoy!

Cool House Art: Don Clausen

If you're a regular at this site you know I like to give art to mark special occasions. My reasoning is simple: it's a unique gift choice - even if it's a print, or an edition, I'll choose a frame that nobody else will have - but more importantly art is something everybody can enjoy everyday.

For our second anniversary in The Cool House I wanted to get The Guy a painting to hang on the sandstone wall in the great room. It had to be large enough for the space, abstract, have some sort of significance to our lives and of course, I had to know we'd both love it.

 

It took a while but eventually I found a large oil on canvas by Californian artist Don Clausen entitled Abstract (1984) at a California auction house.

I was immediately drawn to the colour of the painting, the touches of rose pink and aqua amongst the browns and ochre but it's the sculptural quality of the paint on the canvas that keeps me looking at the painting every day and finding something unique each time; even though Abstract (1984) is composed of geometric shapes there's a sense of movement in it that makes it feel alive. We loved it so much I hunted for more and a couple of years later I found a much earlier (1966) painting, Blue Bird, that now hangs on The Guy's office wall.

Don Clausen has been producing great art including pen and ink drawings, sculptures and assemblages for more than fifty years and he's still working. His most recent exhibition at the Alta Galleria in Berkeley features his latest series Tak, Danish for "Thank you", inspired by artists and musicians like Stan Getz, Salvador Dali and Erik Satie. We were very disappointed to miss last year's retrospective celebrating 50 years of work but on our wishlist of future trips is a stay in northern California and a visit to a gallery to see more of his magnificent paintings.

DIY Art

via pointclickhome

Four or five years ago when we were buying The Cool House someone asked what we were going to do with all the huge white walls as we didn't have enough art to fill the space. I said we'd find more as we went along and if the need arose to hang a big picture I could always paint a blank canvas with a bold solid color. I remember there was much derisive laughter and shaking of heads at this suggestion.

Well, I say to you scoffers: Look at the New York Times Home & Garden section . They showed this panel from the Kips Bay 2009 Decorator Showhouse; a 12'x6' stretched canvas painted with Benjamin Moore Big Sky Blue. Hah! I was just a little ahead of my time.

Artistic License

The Pierre Bonnard painting, Table in Front of the Window, in the previous post must have left more of an impression than I thought.


It influenced something I'm calling Forsythia Through The Office Window.... on a rainy day.
Enjoy!

I got sunshine

Actually I'm about to get buckets of rain but yesterday I took this photo in the middle of cleaning the house, doing the laundry and locating and re-attaching screens - it was a summery 78F on Saturday and we wanted all the windows open and I couldn't remember where we had stored them (yes, we do have that many closets and no, I am not complaining) - all the things we do as spring finally gets a grip on Long Island.

Pierre Bonnard: Table in Front of the Window

The day before we had managed to catch the Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors exhibition at The Met Museum before it closed and I was stuck by the summery mimosa in his paintings that reminded me of glorious warm days in the south of France - sunshine and azure blue skies.
When I saw the yellow forsythia in full bloom I knew I had to run and get a shot before the incipient rainstorm ruined it for another year, it might be the last sunny thing we see for the rest of the week. It ain't mimosa but it will do.

Ceci n'est pas un musée

Well not quite yet anyway but in six short weeks the long awaited Magritte Museum will open in Brussels. In somewhat surreal fashion the website is still under construction but there is a link to this fantastic video that shows the stately Beaux-Arts Museum as well as the virtual Magritte Museum.
Visitors to The Cool House may get a clue how much I love Magritte's art, and I've been to many retrospectives that brought together paintings from all over the world but this museum will house the largest single collection of his work - more than 170 paintings - as well as letters, photographs and films.

The Musée Magritte Museum opens June 2 2009 in the former Hotel Altenloh, a neo-classical building on Place Royale, Brussels. Tickets can be reserved now: by email or phone: +32 (0)2/508 33 33.

I'll be there as soon as possible.

Vintage and Modern's Video Inspiration

Bill Indursky from Vintage and Modern shares his design inspiration, some new items from V & M and a story about Achille Castiglioni's favorite design - a pair of sunglasses made from 35mm film.
My favorite piece on V&M, if you asking, or better yet, buying, is a 1970s carpet by Edward Fields that will go perfectly in the great room. Thanks.

Unnatural Disasters

The Guardian has a feature on Edgar Müller, Master of 3d Pavement Art, today and I was fascinated by the Lava Burst in a German street and this crevasse in Ireland. I couldn't get my head around how it was done. Luckily Mr Müller posted this video on youtube... just to satisfy my curiosity, and yours. Enjoy!

Dreaming of Down Under

This Dwelling print (available on etsy) by 11 year old Sydney resident Moofus was commissioned for the Theme Attic feature in Dwell Magazine. I want to live in this eco-friendly modern house full of colour in the middle of an Australian summer. I'd also like to be as talented as this kid or his mom artist Kate Banazi. Check out her silkscreen prints, too.

Renaissance Porn

A literal Testa de Cazi or dickhead from the profane section of the Met Museum exhibition Art and Love in Renaissance Italy. We stumbled upon this gem of an exhibition quite by accident. After viewing the Baroque Christmas Tree we wanted to see some European art to complete the old world feeling. Somewhere past Caravaggio's Denial of Saint Peter we wandered through the exit of the exhibition and were entranced by the images of the Bella Donna and Venus. It was entrancing. All aspects of love, marriage, family, platonic, as well as sensual both heterosexual and homosexual, are covered by works on paper, paintings, ceramics, sculpture, glass, jewelry and furniture. Other standouts are the maiolica childbirth plates and the wedding rings, including a beautifully ornate Jewish ceremonial ring. The curators have provided a thorough explanation of the imagery employed in these works of art. Let's just say I will be looking at keys, birds and vegetables in a totally different way from now on. And it gave us a new insight into the holiday windows at Bergdorf Goodman that we saw later that evening.
The exhibition runs until February 16th and, brilliant idea this, accompanying lectures are available on the youtubes.

Unique Flower

There have been (verbal) comments that this blog has become more political of late, and I guess the last post won't have helped but I think it still skews more "uniquely modern" than leftist. Anyway, back in Buenos Aires (and don't get me started on the politics there) there was another sculpture, a more modern (2002) but equally unique piece that took my breath away. Designed and paid for by architect Eduardo Catalano, Floralis Genérica sits on a reflecting pond in the Plaza Naciones Unidas. Using hydraulic mechanics, the petals of the huge (60') metal sculpture open in the morning and close with the last of the sun's rays.
Catalano also built the famous mid-century modern Raleigh House in North Carolina, a unique structure with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof that was named "House of the Decade" in 1955. Sadly, the house is no longer standing, it was bulldozed in 2001. Let's hope for a better fate for the metal flower.

Jesus Christ on a Jet Bomber

Buenos Aires is a city of art: sculptures in the parks, paintings in cafes and fantastic museums including MALBA. It was at the last that I saw a work that has haunted me ever since. La Civilización Occidental y Cristiana (Western-Christian Civilization) 1965 by León Ferrari hangs at the end of the exhibition space on the second floor and is as profound and valid today as it was when Ferrari made it to protest the Vietnam War forty years ago. Exploiting religious beliefs to make a case for war or imposing democracy on a country is arrogant, imperialistic and costs thousands of human lives; it doesn't work. I doubt if we'll ever learn this lesson from history, maybe art as arresting as this can make the case.

Cafe life

Sometimes you just need to sit down and catch your breath. Where better than a cafe with a well-stocked bar


in exquisite Beaux-Arts surroundings


and its own permanent art gallery - quality art everywhere you look. Cafe Tortoni in Buenos Aires is a landmark, it may be a little touristy but the architecture is spectacular. The only question is: do I need an espresso or a G&T?

Remarkable

How fortuitous is it that Richard Fuld, ex-Lehman Bros CEO and chairman and his wife Kathy put their art collection in the hands of Christie's with a guaranteed price of $20 million back in September? The Guardian called this deal "remarkable" because the guarantee ensures that even if the art market has tanked and the auction fails to deliver that much the Fulds will get their $20 million anyway.
The auction, which includes three Willem de Koonings and an Ashille Gorky appropriately entitled Agony, is going ahead as I type.

Streetwalkers

We'd gone to the Moma to see the Van Gogh and the Colors if the Night and the Joan Miro: Painting and Anti-Painting exhibitions but it was Kirchner and the Berlin Street that really thrilled us. This small show, that sadly finished its run on Monday, was a true delight. Depicting Berlin's working women in the years just before World War I, the colors are thing you notice first about Kirchner's art; vibrant pinks and luminous yellow, moody greens and blues. The stylised figures, elongated streetwalkers and their furtive clients with blackened eyes, reminded me both of El Greco and the masked characters in James Ensor's paintings.

Potsdamer Platz, 1914

Danger is here on the Berlin streets, you feel the furtiveness of the figures in the background, but there is also vitality, the women dress alluringly in furs and plumed hats. It's almost like looking at stills from My Fair Lady or mannequins in a department store window.
This exhibition along with other works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner can be seen next at The Brücke-Museum in Berlin, if you are planning a visit to Germany between December 13 and March 15 2009.

11.11.11.

Today is Armistice Day, the 90th anniversary of the end of World War One. Even in this time of war it is difficult to image the trauma that millions went through fighting "the war to end all wars", but if you have lived in Flanders there is a constant reminder in the landscape and the rebuilt city of Ieper.
One of the starkest, most powerful experiences is to visit the Menenpoort or Menin Gate and see the names of the missing 54,896 soldiers inscribed into the walls. No one leaves there unaffected by the sacrifice the mostly very young men made in the name of civilisation. Further out of town there are the Cemeteries where thousands of soldiers are buried and the harrowing but compelling In Flanders Fields Museum that tells the story of The Great War from the perspective of witnesses, both soldiers and civilians, to the misery and horror of Ypres, Passchendaele and The Somme. The war ended at 11 am on 11th of November 1918, and is remembered every year at this time with a minute's silence. Lest we forget.

In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
- Lt.-Col. John McCrae

40 years on

Today in the occasional series celebrating the 40th birthday of our house we bring you 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Considered one of the Greatest Films Ever, we attempted to watch this 1968 classic on Thursday evening without the use of psychedelic drugs and we were defeated. It's not that we don't appreciate the metaphors and the message but did it have to take SO. FREAKIN'. LONG?
I actually gave up at the 2 hour mark, yelling "Enough already, I get it at the screen". The Guy, poor fella, who doesn't remember seeing it before, kept saying "Wait, it's nearly over, it must be nearly over". More in desperation than in hope, I think.
For those who can't sit through the iconic movie, or don't have the requisite acid on hand, can I suggest this multilingual site. It explains the movie so you can fake it when challenged by your film buff friends and you save a couple of hours of your life.

Art Deco and All That Jazz

Ok, it was tiny, poorly laid out and badly lit but the Paris/New York: Design Fashion Culture 1925-1940 did have a couple of gems: The radiator grille from the Squibb Building in Manhattan, designed by Buchman & Kahn and the gold on glass panels from the grand hall of the SS Normandie. Then there was a tantalisingly short clip of Josephine Baker performing at a French Revue and a steel model of the Trylon and Perisphere at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
It takes almost as long to read the title of the show as it does to go round it, but really the exhibition was a sort of hors d'oeuvre - it left me hungry to know more about the relationship between the two cities in that inter-war period and reminded me to walk down Fifth Avenue soon to look at the beautiful Art Deco facades we have in New York.

Where am I?

Spain?


France?


Italy?


No, somewhere a little closer to home.