All Photos By Gail
In 1976, comic book artist Jack Kirby and his wife Roz presented Paul and Linda McCartney with a gift of this original drawing while backstage at the Los Angeles Forum, when the couple were touring with their band Wings. The pencil drawing is inscribed:
To Paul & Linda
Best Wishes
Jack Kirby
Continue reading Paul and Linda McCartney Meet Magneto By Jack Kirby
All Photo By Gail
On an appropriately moody, grey afternoon just as the Christmas holidays were winding down on my annual trip to Southern California, we made our way down to San Pedro to check out one of LA’s most majestic hidden gems: the Korean Friendship Bell. If you’ve never been, get ready to add it to your list of “Cool Places to Visit That’s Not a Mall or a Museum.”
Continue reading Grey Skies and Great Vibes: Visiting the Korean Friendship Bell in San Pedro
Photo By Gail
In 1962, Alice Neel (1900 – 1984) moved to her final apartment and studio on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Delimited by what was visible through a north-facing window, this scene in 107th and Broadway (1976) excludes the streets below that give the painting its title. Indeed, this absence animates the composition, whose dominant feature is the crisp shadow cast by the cusped moldings and straight edges of Neel’s apartment block on the whitewashed building across the street. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Alice Neel, 107th and Broadway
Photographed in the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum
In the mid-to-late 20th century, an atmosphere of innovation and a desire to question the tenets of modernism led some designers to explore a variety of ways in which to shape space. American Architect and Designer Alexander Hayden Girard utilized color and pattern in textiles, particularly in this colorful abstract, or folk art-inspired work for Herman Miller.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Glass Armchair by Shiro Kuramata
Photos By Gail
In the mid-1970s, after skewering American political, social and cultural; mores with his work, Peter Saul (b. 1934) took aim at the art world. Saul executed a number of parody responses to Willem de Kooning’s Woman and Bicycle (1952-53, shown below). Here, Saul’s Woman With Bicycle (1976) spoofs de Kooning’s contorted female figure with distortions of his own, rendering the face as a grotesque cartoon and crowding the composition with lurid Day-Glo forms that both draw upon and satirize Surrealist and Pop styles. At once homage and attack, this painting challenges art history, even while claiming Saul’s place within it.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Peter Saul, de Kooning’s Woman With Bicycle