Ned Martin - Time Passages

Jan 5-27, reception Sat 8 Jan:

STUDIO VOGUE Gallery is pleased to welcome Ned Martin as one of several artists featured in Time Passages, our winter exhibition of gallery artists, including Jackie Hall, J. A. Fligel, Donna Koster, Victor Oriecuia, and Vivien Schmidt ... more

Time Passages. STUDIO VOGUE Gallery is pleased to welcome Ned Martin as one of several artists featured in Time Passages, our winter exhibition of gallery artists. Martin transports the viewer to a familiar place through a universal language and gives pause, even for a brief moment, to celebrate the unique quality of his subject. Martin will be joined by Jackie Hall, J. A. Fligel, Donna Koster, Victor Oriecuia, and Vivien Schmidt among others. This eclectic selection is sure to warm up a winter's day with works in oil and acrylic, bronze and marble sculpture, and fine art photography.

Ned Martin is a Realism Oil Painter who lives in New York, New York. He spent his early life and his years as an art major at Towson State University in Maryland exploring various painting media including acrylics, watercolor, pastels, and gouache. Several years ago, he began painting in oils and furthered his formal art training at The Schuler School of Fine Art in Baltimore where he learned the traditional oil painting techniques and principles of Jacques Maroger and the Old Masters.

Ned has embraced the Schuler School experience and continues to meticulously prepare his own wood panels and grind his own paint. While his paintings appear realistic, upon close scrutiny the viewer is delighted with broken impressionistic layers of paint that imply realism. Ned invests considerably in scrubbing, scratching, and scrapping layers of textured paint until a realistic form reveals itself.
 

STUDIO VOGUE Gallery – representing mid-career and emerging artists from Canada and around the world ... more

STUDIO VOGUE Gallery – representing mid-career and emerging artists from Canada and around the world.

274 Avenue Road, Toronto ON M4V 2G7 (just N of Dupont)
Wed-Sat 12-6. Mon & Tues by appointment
T: 416 459 9809
info@studiovoguegallery.com
www.studiovoguegallery.com

A Kingly Velázquez Is Discovered at the Met, Capping Off a Busy Year for the Old Masters

NEW YORK— Just in time for Christmas, scholars at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have given themselves a giant Velázquez, though in truth it is more of a re-gifting — the portrait of Philip IV of Spain had originally come into the collection nearly 100 years ago, but its attribution was downgraded in 1973 to the Old Master's studio. Now, a new cleaning effort has returned the work conclusively to the revered painter's column, according to the New York Times.
Despite possessing a 1624 receipt for the painting that was signed by Velázquez, the Met had reconsidered the portrait's authorship in the 1970s as part of a general auditing of its European painting collection that humbled attributions on 15 percent of its holdings, with the Philip canvas raising doubts in part because of over-varnishing inflicted by its previous owner, legendary dealer Lord Duveen. But a year-long restoration process of the work — which has not weathered the years well, losing an eye at one point, possibly to a vandal — has persuaded connoisseurs that the doubts had been misplaced. "One of the greatest painters of Western tradition — and a royal portrait to boot — is vindicated," Met European paintings chairman Keith Christiansen told the Times. Velázquez scholar Jonathan Brown has likewise welcomed the news. "Although it has suffered losses, what remains is by Velázquez," he said.
The reattribution comes improbably hard on the heels of another Velázquez discovery in the Met's collection, a circa 1630 "Portrait of a Man" that was determined to be by the artist's hand, and not his studio, in September of 2009. But the New York institution is not alone in finding treasures under its nose, and the Old Masters have been popping up everywhere this year. A third Velázquez was discovered by a specialist at the Yale University Art Gallery this summer — making for a remarkable spate of discoveries given that the painter is known to have made only about 110 works during his lifetime.
Then an enormous peasant scene by Pieter Bruegel the Elder was recognized by the Prado in Madrid, a Rembrandt was noticed hanging in the waiting room of the Rotterdam's Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, a giant once-waterlogged crucifix painting was attributed to Giotto in Florence, a potential Michelangelo pietà painting was spotted in an upstate New York home, and the Vatican even said it had uncovered a previously unknown Caravaggio just in time for the 400th anniversary of his death... but had to take back the claim when it was widely debunked. 

By ARTINFO Published: December 21, 2010
Image is courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme

By STAN PARCHIN
The J. Paul Getty Museum is the first of three venues to present The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (June 15-September 12, 2010). This much-anticipated special exhibition, the first of its kind in nearly 40 years, features 99 works by the French artist (1824-1904) and important contemporaries. In light of recent scholarship, the show reconsiders the life and oeuvre of the academic painter and sculptor whose brilliant career was eclipsed by the development of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and the Modernist avant-garde. In Los Angeles, California, the installation is organized thematically and chronologically by Mary Morton, Curator and Head of the Department of French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art and Scott Allen, the Getty's Assistant Curator of Paintings.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824-1904). The Snake Charmer (ca. 1870). Oil on canvas. 83.4 x 122.1 cm. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

Gérôme and Painting
During the early 1840s, Jean-Léon Gérôme excelled at the atelier (studio) of noted Parisian painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856). He continued his education with his mentor in Italy. After his return to France, Gérôme attended the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts. He competed unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome in 1846, having been disqualified in the final round because of inadequate figure-drawing skills. This disappointment profoundly influenced the artist's perpetual preoccupation with painting the perfect nude.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, 1827-1875). Portrait of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1872-73). Marble. H. 61 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum.

Despite the setback, the indefatigable Gérôme's The Cockfight (1847), a genre scene of adolescent sexuality set in a classical landscape, was well-received at that year's Salon. The recognition bolstered the artist's ambitions as a history painter throughout most of the next decade. He was foiled once again when the critics' disliked his monumental allegorical The Age of Augustus (1855), an official commission for French Emperor Napoleon III (r. 1851-70).

The disillusioned Gérôme then turned his attentions to small-scale historical and Orientalist compositions. The Death of Caesar (1867) was acknowledged for the artist's meticulous rendering of the immense Roman Senate's archaeological details as well as its portrayal of the dramatic events that unfolded following the ruler's cold and calculated assassination. The inventive imagery of Gérôme's subsequent The Snake Charmer (ca. 1870) was due, in part, to his 1853 trip to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey). There he derived inspiration from everyday life in the East to paint exotic scenes with the realistic clarity of photography, a new medium he greatly admired.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824-1904). The Death of Caesar (1867). Oil on canvas. 85.5 x 145.5 cm. Walters Art Museum.

The Lure of Sculpture
Always interested in antique art, Gérôme devoted much of his later career to sculpture, frequently cross-referencing his paintings and statues. The artist premiered his first bronze sculpture, a gladiator trampling upon his victim, at the Universal Exposition of 1878.

The current exhibition displays 10 of Gérôme's works in bronze, marble, ivory and mixed media. It also fittingly includes the painter's famous oil on canvas Pygmalion and Galatea (1890), in which he retells the ancient Roman myth about a sculptor who fell in love with his own creation brought to life by a goddess.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904). Pygmalion and Galatea (ca. 1890). Oil on canvas. 88.9 x 68.6 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY.

After the J. Paul Getty Museum, "The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme" travels to the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (October 18, 2010-January 23, 2011) and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid (March 22- June 12, 2011).



Source
Morton, Mary and Scott Allen (eds.), et al. Rediscovering Gérôme. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010. 

http://artmuseumjournal.com/jean_leon_gerome.aspx

This is Art definetely, and almost visual.

During one of my drives home, I switched the radio to the CBC radio2 station - one of my favorite listening spots. My car got instantly filled with a charming atmosphere of pulsating, living music fabric, almost picturesque with its sound.

The Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra is one of those albums that experiments with easy listening, and is on the verge of making you tap your foot to the subtle rhythm. To call it oriental would be to undermine its complexity, to call it oldies would be to understate its variation, and to name it after any genre than itself would be to disregard its very being.

Composed by Andy McNeill, and with the association of an odd group of individuals, The Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra is truly worth a listen to.

So, what are you waiting for? Go http://www.mmstorchestra.com listen mp3 and order your CD. I already have it in my collection.

Julie Heffernan's Self-Portrait

The “Self-Portrait” is not only the woman centered in the picture plane but the entire canvas. Each of Heffernan’s paintings is compulsively constructed like that of a surreal automatic drawing, rendering a multiplicity of images like journal entries: the fruit canopies, knotted forests, ghostly wallpaper and vignettes encased in thought bubbles that float around the figure’s head. At the very least, her “self” extends to the canvas edge; at most, it cannot be contained. The amount of detail poured into each painting nearly overflows with life, and invites you in.

Her paintings are a constant dilemma of opposites between - the gorgeous and grotesque, attraction and repulsion. The series Booty amasses the spoils of war. It presents us with a bounty of enormous amounts of both wealth and waste of resources, energy and lives. Yet, the figure does not stoop under the weight of it all, but holds
herself upright among the surrounding foe, heavy ornaments and animal corpses with the most extraordinary grace.

Like the Old Masters that her work evokes, Julie Heffernan’s paintings give us a lot to look at, a wealth of sheer visual entertainment. Burnished with a pearly gloss concocted from a unique recipe of intelligence, fairy tale, art history and high fashion, each image engages us for a long time, and compels us to move closer, then further away , then closer again – as opposed to those paintings that we feel we know perfectly well, or well enough, from across the room.
-Francine Prose


Julie Heffernan, "Self Portrait as Booty" 2007, Oil on canvas, 68 1/2 x 65 inches

Julie Heffernan was born in 1956 and received her MFA from Yale University.
She has had numerous one-person exhibitions around the country and has shown
internationally. She has received a Lila Acheson Wallace award, NY Foundation for the Arts award, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright-Hayes Grant.

Image is courtesy of P.P.O.W. Gallery

Winner of the 2009 Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Award.

The International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) announced the Winner of the 2009 Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Award*. It is:

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
By Lewis Carroll
Illustrated by Oleg Lipchenko
ISBN 978-0-88776932-0
US $22.95 / CAN $24.99
All ages

“…Oleg Lipchenko has turned this classic story into a rich expression for both the youngest reader greeting Alice for the first time and those who remember reading the original Alice as children...Lipchenko’s illustrations are more than images on a page, they are a homage to the surreality and humour of Carroll’s text as well as a meticulously and brilliantly constructed vision of a longstanding tradition in children’s literature.” – Jury’s comments

* The Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Award was established in 1985 following the death of Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver, one of Canada's pre-eminent book illustrators. In her will, Cleaver left a fund of $10,000 dollars for an award to be given annually in recognition of outstanding artistic talent in a Canadian picture book. The recipient receives a cheque for $1,000 dollars and a certificate.

The Cleaver Award is administered by a committee of three members of the Canadian section of the International Board on Books for Young People. The recipient is a Canadian illustrator of a picture book published in Canada in English or French during the previous calendar year. To be eligible, the book must be a first edition and contain original illustrations. All genres are considered: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, folk and fairy tales.

Mutants, Darwin and manipulating with Nature - Ji Yong Ho

The modern Korean-born sculptor Ji Yong Ho creates sculptures of animals from truck, bicycle and automobile tires. “The product is from nature, from the white sap of latex trees. But here it’s changed. The color is black. The look is scary.” Ji Yong Ho considers that he promotes the revival of the used tree trunks, giving them new forms of a life. He says: “My concept is mutation—mutants.” His vision of mutants originates from the theory of Darwin, from genetic engineering, and from the means by which humans manipulate the nature utilizing the theory of evolution. Ji Yong Ho considers his art as a warning; if we’re not careful, we may soon lose the ability to see animals in their natural state altogether.

Ji Yong Ho about his unique technique: "I usually use cut tires, old tires, because I want to figure out my own unique materials. Tires have a lot of patterns and tires come from nature or laboratory or oil, so I want to give them second life. Usually for the chest or shoulders I need big tires, big size tires, so I use tractor tires, and then the body shape I use auto bike tires, and then the face I need more details, so I use the bicycles tires."

Ned Ryerson
StudioTreasure.com
Image courtesy of Gana Art Gallery