Bodies in Motion

Leaping from the page in an array of balletic poses and moves, the illustrations of Leah Yerpe are marvelous creations. Sketched beautifully in pencil, she achieves a high level of realism and contrast between light and dark. A native New Yorker, she has exhibited extensively across the US.

Leah Yerpe‘s charcoal drawings depict the true beauty and joy of movement. Her work somehow captures the both the constrains of human anatomy, and also the freedom we can experience in our own bodies. Her figures are twisted, but graceful; tightly bound, but free. Her figures’ faces are typically obscured, which leaves their expressions and emotions a mystery. Their poses could represent pain or ecstasy. They could be falling or flying. They overlap like elements in a collage, but the larger image is one of cohesion as bodies blend together to create beautiful new forms.

Culled From illusion

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Duncan Campbell Wins the 2014 Turner Prize

This year’s Turner Prize, the United Kingdom’s most highly esteemed and controversial art award, has been given to Duncan Campbell for his film It for Others. The 42-year-old Irish artist now joins the ranks of such past winners as Damien Hirst , Douglas Gordon, Steve McQueen, and Martin Creed. The prize comes with £25,000 (about $39,000) prize.

Shot on 16 millimeter film and transferred to digital video, It for Others takes its cues from Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, and Ghislain Cloquet’s 1953 film essay Statues Also Die. Campbell’s 54-minute film looks at cultural imperialism, specifically in the way that museums snatch up artifacts and remove them from their original context. Divided into sections, the film includes images of African masks, bottles, jars, packets, and Das Kapital-inspired Michael Clark choreography. The Guardian’s Laura Cumming, who called Campbell the “obvious winner” in her review of the show of nominees’ work held at the Tate Modern, also noted the political subtext of the 2013 film—it also refers to the way images of IRA martyrs are exploited for emotional and political reasons.

The 2014 edition of the Turner Prize was unusual because none of its nominees—Campbell, James Richards, Tris Vonna-Michell, and Ciara Phillips—generated any scandals through or around their work. All of the work had a strong conceptual component, which has become the norm for the Turner Prize, and none of it involved painting or sculpture.

Culled from Artnews

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Amazing Bushwick Collective Street Art Photos Taken By Marcela Nowak

Marcela Nowak  is an industrial design student from Poland,who loves taking pictures! While visiting New york city he couldn’t resist a visit to Bushwick Collective Art.

His tour around New york city took him to  Bushwick Collective Art , the Bushwick collective Art  is an outdoor Gallery of artists from all over the world. The Bushwick Collective is a bit harder to find since it’s spread out over a few blocks ..street art culture is alive .

 Culled from Bored Panda

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Margarine artist Vipula Athukorale’s Culinary World Cup win

Vipula Athukorale won the gold medal for his World War One battlefield scene

A chef who carves sculptures from margarine has won an international competition for a second time.

Vipula Athukorale, 51, who lives in Leicester, achieved gold during the Culinary World Cup, held in Luxembourg, the same event he won in 2010.

He said his winning entry, a World War One battlefield scene, took him three weeks and is made from 20kg (44lb) of pastry margarine.

He said he had wanted to mark the 100th anniversary of the conflict’s outbreak.

Mr Athukorale’s 2010 win was based on a Victorian street scene by artist Ronald Embleton, which he showed to the public at Belgrave Hall Museum, in 2011.

Other margarine sculptures he has completed include a foot-long Rolls Royce car complete with four passengers travelling to a wedding.

The artist said he has to keep his breathing steady while carving finer details and sometimes works long into the night.

As well as margarine, which carves better than butter, Mr Athukorale, who is originally from Sri Lanka, has made art from watermelon and lumps of polystyrene.

He trained as a hotel manager in Sri Lanka but developed his food art in 1984 while working as a kitchen artist, carving table centre-pieces for five star hotels.

After working at hotels in Iraq, Bahrain and Athens he moved to Leicester in 2004.

Culled from BBC news

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Interview with Yinka Shonibare

Yinka Shonibare was born in London and lived in Nigeria with his family until the age of 16, when he moved back to London for school. At age 18, he fell ill with a debilitating disease that rendered one half of his body paralyzed. With the assistance of artists, Shonibare creates paintings, sculpture, photography, and installations that explore the “artificial construct” of the Western art canon. His signature is his use of what appears to be African textiles that, with closer investigation, have cross-cultural roots—the main exporters of this type of textile are based in the UK and the Netherlands. In another cross of cultures, Shonibare uses the textiles to reenact classic scenes in art history, for instance Fragonard’s The Swing or Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.His poignant work has been widely recognized and exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, documenta XI, and the Brooklyn Museum. In 2004, he was on the shortlist for the Turner Prize for his “Double Dutch” exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rottendam. He lives and works in London.

When did you know you wanted to be an artist?  
When I was at school. I enjoyed art lessons and knew I wanted to carry it on as a career

What inspires you?
I am often inspired by artists and musicians who think outside the box and who are not ‘mainstream’ in their approach. I like the work of Yayoi Kusama. I like Fela Kuru, and I like the musician Tricky because he’s creative and interesting to watch.

If you could own any work of modern or contemporary art, what would it be?  
It would be a James Turrell light installation because I’m going through a spiritual period, and I want something I find calm and spiritual, such as his light pieces.

What are you working on at the moment?
I have two exhibitions in New York in the spring that I am working on, and a large exhibition later next year that will tour Asia. I am always thinking toward the next exhibition

When not making art, what do you like to do?  
To run a supper club, read books, and go to the cinema. I also like going to the opera, watching live music, and going to the ballet.

 

Culled From artnet

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Step By Step From A Blank Page To The Complete Drawing Of A Steampunk Lion

  Paula Duță is an interior designer from Romania . Who  loves to draw.

Here is one work that she is fond of. The Steampunk Lion is a 100/70 cm drawing on which different markers, pens, watercolors and a lot of other materials were used .

Culled from Bored Panda , Read Original Article Here

The Tallest Piece of Street Art in the UK is Highly Political

The renowned street artist Stik has completed the tallest piece of street art in the UK: a 125-foot mural covering the side façade of a soon-to-be demolished block of council flats in the London area of Acton. The enormous work is “aimed at raising awareness about the lack of social housing in the area,” the Independent reports.

The piece, entitled Big Mother, depicts a mother and child in Stik’s signature stickman drawing style. It took a year of planning and one month of painting to execute, much of which Stik spent perched on a crane, 38 meters (125 feet) above the ground.

“The mother and child symbol are a representation of the families that live in this block,” Stik told the Independent. “The figures that I have painted are looking down sadly at their neighborhood which is being developed with luxury apartments and this building is being demolished.”

The mural can be viewed across west London, and is visible from planes departing and arriving at Heathrow Airport. “It’s great that as people arrive in the country they can see the mother and child looking across the expanse of private development,” the artist remarked.

Stik painted Big Mother for free, as part of a project “to get local street artists to brighten up the area,” explained Rachel Pepper, project manager for Acton Arts Forum. “There are some dark and dingy parts on the estate and we now have about 15 or 16 pieces of artwork that people come to see especially,” she told the Independent.

Visit Stik for more info

Culled From artnet

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The Highest selling Woman In Art Auction history

 Georgia O’Keeffe, one of the godmothers of modernist painting, has just made history at Sotheby’s auction. A work by the late American artist smashed records when it sold for $44.4 million — a price three times larger than the previous auction record for a female artist.

Congratulations Georgia, you are now (posthumously) the highest-selling woman in art.

The 1932 offering shown above, “Jimson Weed, White Flower No. 1,” depicts one of O’Keeffe’s favorite subjects: a magnified flower. To her, the delicate blooms stood as some of the most overlooked pieces of naturally occurring beauty, objects that the bustling contemporary world ignored. So she made it her mission to highlight their complex structures, explaining: “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.”

Robert Kret, director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, NM, announced the institution’s decision to sell the work earlier this year. In an attempt to “refine its holdings,” Kret and a team of curators opted to put “Jimson Weed,” “On the Old Santa Fe Road,” and “Untitled (Skunk Cabbage)” on the auction block. They were expected to fetch, respectively, $10 million to $15 million, $2 million to $3 million and $500,000 to $750,000. “Jimson Weed” alone managed to quadruple the low end estimate.

The buyer wishes to remain anonymous, according to The New York Times.

Artist Joan Mitchell previously held the title for priciest female artist, setting a record with the $11.9 million sale of an untitled 1960 painting. The late Louise Bourgeois and Berthe Morisot have managed to make waves in recent years too. Among the top living female artists today are Cady Noland, Marlene Dumas, Bridgette Riley and Yayoi Kusama.

The priciest piece of art ever sold at auction — Francis Bacon’s 1969 triptych — was bought last year for a whopping $142.4 million. Of course, Bacon is a male artist, and whether we like it or not, male artists have tended to dominate the art market for as long as Sotheby’s has been wielding a gavel. “Something is stopping women matching the sales results of male artists at auction,” Forbes’ Kathryn Tully wrote. “Should museums, galleries, and yes, auction houses be doing more to promote the work of female artists?”

The Guardian’s Kira Cochrane stated it simply: “An audit of the art world shows that every artist in the top 100 auction sales last year was a man.” But things are changing, she added.

With O’Keeffe’s auction record, Art lovers will once again celebrate women’s potential at auction. So while the folks at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum chalk the sale up as a win for acquisition funds, they can also celebrate their instrumental role in emphasizing women’s rising power in a male-dominated market.

Article culled from The Huffington Post , Read Original Article HERE

 

 

Sneak Peek at Beyoncé and Jay Z’s Art Collection

A still from Beyoncés new music video 7/11 featuring David Hammons (left) and Richard Prince (right)
Photo: Art News

Ever wondered what kind of art Beyoncé and Jay Z are into? Internet mavens have identified two artworks in the video for Beyoncé’s new single 7/11, which was filmed inside the Tribeca apartment the R&B superstar shares with her husband. In the video she dances in front of a David Hammons Basketball drawing, and a Car Hood wall piece by Richard Prince.

According to the artnet price database, a similar drawing from Hammon’s Basketball series entitled Hail Mary (Basketball drawing)(2006) sold for $657,000 at Sotheby’s New York in 2008. A similar Richard Prince Car Hood wall piece, Untitled (SB Hood #1) (1989) sold for $486,791 at Christie’s London in 2013.

In a 2010 interview with Howard Stern, Jay Z mentioned an Hammons piece: “I try to buy things that resonate with me … David Hammons has [made] a huge painting with bricks on the bottom which reminds me of the projects, where I come from.”

The pop star couple is  a regular fixture on the art fair circuit. Their recent self-publicized trip to the Louvre in Paris went viral on the internet (see “Beyoncé and Jay Z Pose with Mona Lisa“). Last month Beyoncé and Jay Z even attended a Halloween Party dressed as Frida Kahlo and Jean-Michel Basquiat (see “Beyoncé and Jay Z Dressed as Frida Kahlo and Basquiat for Halloween“).

Article Culled from artnet, View original article here

Beyoncé’s 7/11 ‘Selfie’ Music Video

Kim Kardashian attempted to break the Internet earlier this month when she allowed Paper Magazine to publish nude photos of her for their December “Break the Internet” issue. For at least three days — a century in Internet speak — her name was on the tip of every digital tongue across the web. But the conversation shifted swiftly and definitively on Friday, when for the second time in one year, Beyoncé practiced unorthodox proceedings and utilized social media’s democracy to drop a single and accompanying music video without providing context.

Since Friday, Beyoncé’s “7/11″ has garnered 26,382,089 views on YouTube, which is impressive but not unpredictable when considering the star’s clout. What is unique, however, is the actual video, which is effectively a three and a half minute selfie that appends a 15-word song, which will at best become a club hit and at worst, give your mother a headache.

She’s on a terrace, wearing knee pads, acting jovially in a sweatshirt that reads Kale across the front. She’s spinning in a chair and then she’s in a bathroom. She wears full-coverage granny panties with the same demure austerity that she does Givenchy couture (worn under a sweatshirt) and though she’s conceivably goofing off, sometimes with her friends-cum-back-up dancers, other times with a Christmas tree as her leading back-up dancer, the assumption is that whatever we’re seeing has been conceptualized deliberately and marketed for public consumption.

Here’s the thing, though: this semi-crude selfie video, when held up against the highly produced and incredibly styled videos that are typically indicative of a Beyonce production, could theoretically make a much larger statement about the way in which we consume digital entertainment.

Maybe in 2014, it’s no longer really about achieving the most beautiful, or rehearsed “shot” so much as it is making sure that your point is conveyed unflinchingly and clearly.

The video in question, which commanded parallel engagement and enthusiasm vis-a-vis it’s fancier siblings, seems like an old-school nod to creative substance (solid dance moves, a human necessity to connect with, or experience celebration) that is being propelled by the proliferation of technology in a way that is nostalgic but fundamentally only available to be tested as a result of progression. This video stands as an interesting case study on the topic of over-saturation and what that concentration leads to.

If it does, in fact, drive the generation of minimalism, does that mean we’re entering the age of modernist digital content?

Watch Full Video Here:

Article Culled From MR