Art Detectives

  Another great day of random art from Google Art and Culture.  Top of the day was Tarig Ali's On Al Khan Beach. Natureza Morta, Estêvão Silva 1888 -- link -- Still Life with Watermelon, Pears, Grapes, Lilly Martin Spencerca. 1860 -- link -- On Al Khan Beach, Tariq Ali -- link -- untitled, Vhils, Klit 2011/2013 -- link -- Katje added this wonderful link about Vhils's work, she wrote, "I just love that they have the 'construction debris' under the artwork"  -- link --

  Top of show today was an untitled work by Uruba Slaughter. Sargent Claude Johnson, People -- link -- Fred Wilson, Chandelier Mori -- link -- Fred Wilson, Speak of Me as I Am -- link -- Fred Wilson, Chandeliers -- link -- Emma Amos, Tightrope, 1994 -- link -- Monica Beasley, Everything Reminds Me of You, 2014 -- link -- Uruba Slaughter, Untitled, Contemporary (no date given) -- link --

The wonderful Bisa Butler started our foray back into the work of scintillating African-American artists with The Safety Patrol from 2018. I am sharing this quote from The Art Institute of Chicago which is far better written that anything I could craft: "She strategically uses textiles—a traditionally marginalized medium—to interrogate the historical marginalization of her subjects while using scale and subtle detail to convey her subjects’ complex individuality. Together, Butler’s quilts present an expansive view of history through their engagement with themes such as family, community, migration, the promise of youth, and artistic and intellectual legacies." They pay a lot of money for descriptions that good! Bisa's colorful children with their powerful stance made us melt. She is a national treasure.  Vera featured the work of Harriet Powers a couple of days ago, and we just had to see her Pictorial Quilt from 1895 as part of our discovery together. Barry found descrip

  We had a great discussion about artistic talks, art reality shows & contests & some of the links or suggestions from our chat are below.  Then we got to see an Edward Hopper from 1931 called New York, New Haven and Hartford which Luba pointed out is the name of a prominent rail line. Some people saw it as a lonely, sad painting given what many believe about Hopper's moods and solitary lifestyle. Others felt it was bucolic, peaceful, restful. Katherine & East Coast Barry read passages that showed both of those perspectives. But however you receive it, it's a beautiful, deeply touching painting. It was our Top of the Day!  We got a surprise in the sublime work of Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, the Wild Apple Orchard from 2008. With Detective Beth's prodding, we were able to see two other pieces of her artistry so we got a three-for-one experience! Nyapanyapa is a Yolngu woman of the Gumatj clan and was born in Arnhem Land, Australia in about 1945. Her father, Mungurrawuy

  Today we got to view some more photos from our member Barry (East Coast version!) -- it's so wonderful to have the artist share their work and talk about process & technique. The stories behind the photos today make them even more rich. For the bird pics, we even had some Ornithological detectives helping identify some of our feathery friends. So wonderful of Barry to share his photos with us & we had a lively discussion about each. Click on the top left (the little white bars) of this blog to see more of the artwork of our members.  We switched to our random art "machine" from Google Arts & Culture and found some treasures! Today we say Ralph Balson's Construction in Green from 1942 a work that draws influence from cubism & which Ruth suggested is Geometric Abstraction. Balson was born in England but settled in Australia and made his living, in his early years, as a house painter! He was ahead of his time & we can't wait to see more of his

  We had the great fortune of one of our own sharing her work & techniques with us today! Katje let us view some of the artwork she's created since the pandemic began. At the beginning of the lockdown, she was in her craft room and realized she had all kinds of art supplies!! Luckily for us, she started putting it to paper. All kinds of paper! All kinds of watercolor paints, pens, pencils -- "If art supplies has the word, 'water,' in it, I probably have it!" Truly enjoyable to have her share "the how" of creating. Check out our member artwork in the top left (three little horizontal white lines.)   Here is Katje's Quarantine ar t. Jerry found this fantastic artist, Faig Ahmed from Azerbaijan. He creates conceptual sculptural works of art that seem to erupt from traditional rugs. We also watched a short video showing his weavers working from his designs as he talked about his process. We only saw three of his sensations today -- Jerry found severa

 Enjoyable day sharing pics recommended by our team! We looked at two more paintings from Luba's friend James F. Jereb. Luba said, "He's relieved to have moved out of his pointillist period and on to other things!" It's understandable since we were all gobsmacked at how he could have made so many perfectly shaped points / dots / dibs of pigment. Infinity 1, a black and white painting with gray & perhaps lavender, was marvel enough but Holy Grail, with it's colorful array of dots & constellations took our Top of the Day.  Kiki gave us the Sedlec Ossuary, the Church of Bones! The exterior looks like a nondescript house of worship, but inside -- human bones & skulls adorn the walls, ceiling, altar, even the chandeliers! The church & its cemetery were founded in the early 1200s. Katje told a story that when an Abbot of the church brought back "holy soil" from Jerusalem, it became the "hip" site for Bohemians to bury their dead! 

  We looked at some photographs from group member Ruth today. She has such a great eye for composition, as several of us noted, and her photos have such rich color, light & shading. She's traveled all over -- so getting to see the garb of dancers from around the world is a real treat. She was shy about doing so, but we all really appreciated getting to hear her take on the photos & Ruth's generosity in sharing with us. Her work, and an earlier showing, are in our Member Art section.   After, we looked at some of the work from Luba's friend, James F. Jereb. He's a self-taught mult-disciplinary artist who creates large-scale labyrinthian outdoor installations as well as intricate paintings created often with pointilist techniques. We looked at many of his shrines and then some of his artwork, but only scratched the surface. There's a great interview of him on the website -- he's unique & you definitely get insight into his work. We will look at a litt

This morning we played Monday Madness! And I learned to "Trust the App!" (and no pre-plan the art! Hahah!) We surveyed a beautiful mural, also our Top of the Day by Seth Globepainter (real name Julien Malland) entitled by the community: Lady Liberty. Painted on the side of a Government Building with the artistry & assistance of students from the Mayor's Summer Youth Employment Program & the Museum of Public Art.  We saw an exquisite interpretation of Lady Liberty with allusions to The Underground Railroad & Harriet Tubman -- a nice connection with Vera's Black History Month featured painting, COrnell Barnes The Last Supper which also has Harriet Tubman as well as other black icons & heroes. The teens who helped Seth paint this huge wall painting added their own touches .... lots of Louisiana artifacts from the state bird to crawdads to the fleur-de-lis as well as nods to their high schools & graduation dates.  Next up was a VERY busy The Archdukes

  The surprise of the day was Detective Beth finding that a beautiful piece of art I thought was a photograph was actually a painting! Calida Rawles, Reflecting My Grace, shows a young woman, floating, swimming in water. Calida Rawles created this and a series of women floating in water in response to police killings in the years before. This was a way for her to draw strength from the important protests that sprung up all over the world. Various images of baptism, overcoming adversity, re-birth & birth, renewal, the painful Middle Passage, and Botticelli's Birth of Venus came to mind. We also saw faces, fish, plants in the water and in the swirl of our swimmer's arm. Once we realized it was acrylic on canvas, our jaws dropped. Calida's painting looks like a photo with manipulated water. I've included a link to Calida's show, A Dream for My Lilith, with other works from the series & they're placement in the Various Small Fires gallery in L.A. Takes your

  Our Top of the Day is a real delight – the exquisitely drawn Night Club Map of Harlem in 1932 by renowned illustrator E. Simms Campbell, an African American commercial artist featured in Life, Esquire (& the companion periodical he created, Esky), The New Yorker, Ebony, Cosmopolitan as well as countless other magazines & papers. This detailed map shows many of the bigger music joints & restaurants that populated Harlem during a key year in its Renaissance (1910-mid 1930s.) We were so excited we spent a lot of time exploring its features, discovering the sparks of life & humor Campbell brought to life. Campbell’s map is featured in the book version of Ken Burns; Terry referenced the award-winning documentary. Jerry found a link to “The Snake Hips” dance that & Katje found a video of Gladys Bentley, the “gal” in the & high-hat, singing. Check the links! What an entrancing treasure hunt! Thanks to Vera's suggestion, we listened to & and viewed performance

  Wow. Today we celebrated the work of Nick Cave, an innovative avant-garde multi-media artist Nick Cave. I’d seen an exhibition of Soundsuits in NY many years ago & coincidentally, Vera, Ruth, AND Kiki all sent me info about his work! Great minds! All of us keenly attracted to the work of this fantastic dancer, fabric sculptor, & performance artist. We saw two of his Soundsuits from 2008 plus a video showing the movements of the ones I saw in NYC. During our show, Kiki sent an article showing two beautiful, bushy-suited dancers performing in Detroit from 2015. Stunning & groundbreaking and our Top of the Day! We looked next at Kahlil Robert Irving’s ceramic sculpture,100s, from 2018. Made up of glazed and unglazed stoneware & porcelain with opal, silver, and blue luster; complete with decals. This ceramic assemblage is a response to the trauma of violence against African-Americans & is part of the permanent collection at the Whitney Museum of Art. I thought it look

  We looked at works by African American artists today in celebration of Black History Month. We started with a classical one, sculptor Edmonia Lewis’s The Death of Cleopatra from 1876. For 1876, this was a bit of a scandal. First, a woman sculptor displays a figure in the throes of death – this was unheard of at the time. Second, Edmonia was an African American artist, so it was also noteworthy & caused a stir. And third, her depiction is a beautiful figure with full bosom which for 1876 – was titillating (no pun intended!) Top of the Day! The wonderful David Driskell who just passed away last year at the age of 88, sadly, of covid-19, was next in line. His collage painting Jazz Singer (Lady of Leisure, Fox) from 1974 is a pastiche of color & shapes, images like a painting on the side which caught Katherine’s eye, a jukebox as Beth suggested, and wonderful imagery of animals & African artistry. Driskell has soooo many beautiful pieces of art. It will be a joy to share thos

 It's Monday Madness! We used Google Arts & Cultures random painting / art system and came up with several treasures. Most of our group felt like Jacob van Hulsdonck’s Still Life with Lemons, Oranges, and a Pomegranate was a little too perfect! Some of the gang looked for blemishes and others felt the bowl looked separate from the fruit – almost making some of the pieces of fruit seem to float over the bowl. And Trish pointed out a see-through lemon! We marveled at this wonderful woodcutting from Harper’s Magazine in 1867. We didn’t even comment on the fact that it was one of our collective landscape artist fave Winslow Homer! We discussed how intricate and how time consuming it must be to carve out this masterful woodblock with so many delicate lines. Beth mentioned that the periodical must have had several of these every issue; so imagine making several of these every month! At first, John William Hill’s Fawn's Leap, Catskill Mountains (also 1867) didn’t strike several of

Friday's are wacky days to send us off on our weekends -- and today was definitely wild. We showcased artistic hair pieces from Hair Shows.  Beautician & Stylist conventions & trade shows occur all over the world. They almost always include a grand show where coiffurists create miraculous constructions out of human hair!  We saw the top of models' heads adorned with a working helicopter, a violin / ukulele / guitar, a space-doo with stars & planets, a wildly colored mohawk that rivals any punk rocker. We also discussed a "Holy Hair!" extravaganza that placed its gorgeous model's head as close to the Heavens as she could get!    Our Top of the Day is the Mohawk like color explosion, as someone said, a fireworks-like display of hair wizardry.  We have more hair-fancies in our future as I collected shows from Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Nigeria, Australia! There's so much hair-art to see!  Monday is Madness Day where we get a palate cleanser of Google Arts

  New enriching Gaudí ports today! We saw the Portal Miralles from the Sarrià neighborhood in Barcelona. This was the gateway to the Miralles estate, the benefactors who commissioned Gaudí to create this beautiful, asymmetrical ingress. See the link for varied views.  We ventured out onto the Jardins Artigas -- the bridge welcomes us with figures of Carmen Miranda & Cesar Romero (Haha!) and the park is one of Gaudí's simple masterpieces. It's not as big as the Park Guell, but it's organic structures & inviting design made us all want to have coffee on its perches. Even our non-coffee folks!!!!  Our Top of the Day is La Colònia Güell, an unfinished church created by "His Brilliance" that intrigued us all. It has influences from Moorish art & architecture, the Crusades, Spanish, Arabic, Catalonian and Nature. Gaudí did terribly in design school and we are all the better for it. He even designed the very modern looking furniture / pews in the church and w

  We had a delightful start with photos from both Kiki & Vera of Gaudí's works. Like Terry's marvelous showcase yesterday, Kiki & Vera shared details we would not have been able to see in standard photos! Each of the photos really enriched our experiences of what we know of Gaudí's work.  After those lovely gifts, we went to several more Gaudí sites -- we got a little look at the Gaudí House, but need to add more photos of that -- so I will show more tomorrow (as opposed to putting them on here without us having a chance to look at them.)  We then went to El Capricho de Gaudí which is right on the coast of northern Spain. This house heralds the avant-garde / modernist movement in European Architecture. It looks like a cathedral but this ornate structure was built 1883-1885 as a summer home!  Next we saw one of the more staid Gaudí buildings in León. It was originally built as a residential building with a warehouse to store fabric. After many years it became a bank.

Today we had a wonderful surprise!  Terry showed her photos of Casa Milà, one of Antoni Gaudí's many masterpieces in Barcelona. Terry visited several years ago and got some wonderful shots of both the exterior & interior. We were rapt as she talked about her experiences. As an Urban Planner for many many years, Terry has a unique perspective & today's show was really a thrill.  Next she showed us her pics of Parque Güell, a beautiful intricate series of gardens and buildings, pathways, sculptures and benches on Carmel Hill in the Catalonia section of Barcelona. She got great close-ups of the mosaic tiles throughout the part as well as statues, planters .... take a look! So many Gaudí treasures!  More Gaudí' Gifts tomorrow!  Here is the link to Terry's Barcelona Gaudi photos !

 Our Google Arts & Culture show started with Suiko a Japanese graffiti artist's big Scorpion mural from the Pera Museum in Istanbul. The vibrant color and mechanical look to the 32-foot arachnid reminded one of our gang of Friday's Top of the Day - the mechanical cows of Miina Äkkijyrkkä (check out the blog entry before this.)  Michael's Barrett's Aviero was up next; watercolor & China ink (same as Indian Ink, which originated in China) houses with what looks like graying soot. Some people saw criticism of the Industrial Age while others took hope from the clean side of the central building, the colors in the painting, as well as the sun peeking out at the top. NOTE: Found a link to a style of houses from the Aviero neighborhood in Portugal which look very similar to these houses.  Malach by Jerome Kaplan -- a bright bold lithograph made us gasp. Kaplan's fearless use of color and the piercing look from his heroine made great sense when one of our own told u