Friday, August 28, 2009

Robert Capa



Photo: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times


After (quickly) reading/discussing a recent NYT Robert Capa article in class, I remembered another NYT article and slide show regarding The Mexican Suitcase from a Hugh Graham posting.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/04/29/arts/20090429_SUITCASE_SLIDESHOW_index.html


I need to review both -- and more -- again.

p.s. Articles re: above ....

Article regarding slide show is at : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/arts/design/30capa.html

Foto4 Group discussion article : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/arts/design/30capa.html

p.s. The International Center of Photography is "now planning a major exhibition of much of the work from the Mexican suitcase for sometime in 2010, Mr. Wallis said, adding: 'We consider this one of the most important discoveries of photographic work of the 20th century.'"

p.s. Robert Capa created the The International Center of Photography, yes?

Luc Tuymans




Luc Tuymans
Orchid, 1998
Oil on canvas
39 1/4 x 30 1/4 in. (99.7 x 76.8 cm)
Private collection, courtesy David Zwirner, New York
© Luc Tuymans Photo: Felix Tirry, courtesy David Zwirner, New York

Initially, I was drawn to expressive lighting and nuanced surfaces of Luc Tuyman's paintings, which I discovered via the Wexner Center for the Arts posting on E-FLUX. Once on the Wexner site, I found additional information (excerpted, in part, below) which further heightened my interest. I discovered that this artist and I have similar interests in a number of areas, viz. a) conceptual issues concerning memory, identity and history, and b) the relationship of photography to other forms of fine art. Interesting, no?

Excerpts from www.wexarts.org:

"Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) is considered one of the most significant European painters of his generation, and has been an enduring influence on younger and emerging artists. Born and raised in Antwerp, where he lives and works, Tuymans is an inheritor to the vast tradition of Northern European painting. At the same time, as a child of the 1950s, his relationship to the medium is understandably influenced by photography, television, and cinema.

Interested in the lingering effects of World War II on the lives of Europeans, Tuymans explores issues of history and memory, as well as the relationship between photography and painting, using a muted palette to create canvases that are simultaneously withholding and disarmingly stark. Drawing on imagery from photography, television, and film, his distinctive compositions make ingenious use of cropping, close-ups, framing, and sequencing, offering fresh perspectives on the medium of painting, as well as larger cultural issues. Tuymans’s paintings might initially suggest relatively innocuous depictions of everyday life—whether interiors, landscapes, or figural representations—but there is almost always another meaning lurking beneath the surface."

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WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT LUC TUYMANS (THE EXHIBITION) AND LUC TUYMANS (THE ARTIST)

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“The contemporary art market may be in freefall, but Belgian painter Luc Tuymans, long regarded as one of the art world's brightest stars, is having a banner year….Mr. Tuymans combines a keen knowledge of the Flemish old masters with an instinctively cinematic approach to painting. Though he may apply his paint like an old master, he uses close-ups and framing devices with the skill of a great 20th-century film director.”—The Wall Street Journal (July 3, 2009)

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“With his subdued colors; use of imagery from television, photography, and films; and subtle invocations of history and politics, Tuymans has reinvigorated representational painting.”—ELLE Décor (September 2009)

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“Tuymans’s paintings are figurative, cool, drawn from an international collective memory, his palette broken, extracted from the media, film, TV, and Polaroids rather than nature.”—Vanity Fair (October 2006)

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“I want to make people think. I want them to be confused and unnerved.”—Luc Tuymans (quoted in Art + Auction, September 2004)

“None of my art is truly abstract, everything is derived from reality….no imagination could overrule reality.”—Luc Tuymans (quoted in Art World magazine, April/May 2009)

“I try to create a feeling of distrust of the image—of every type of imagery, basically—because an image can always be manipulated.”—Luc Tuymans, in The Wall Street Journal (July 3, 2009)

New Blog.

I hope you will enjoy blogging entries as they are posted.

Be sure to visit my fine art website, izahgallagher.com, if you haven't already!

Xo,Izah.