Throughout her long career, Louise Bourgeois (1911 – 2010) treated the motif of spiders across many different media, from drawings and prints to monumental outdoor sculpture. The theme was initially associated with her mother, a tapestry restorer, but grew to take on broader associations as a strong female protector against evil. This example, Spider Woman — dating from the last decade of the artist’s life — represents a female spider with a human face, contained within an egg-shaped form. The vibrant scarlet ink is a color that Bourgeois favored in her later work.
Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
If you happen to be lucky enough to visit the Danish city of Copenhagen, don’t miss your chance to make a very fun visit to their fantastic Designmuseum, which is where I saw this super modern ladder designed by Karen Kjaegaard. The space-saving, bright red lacquered Apple Jack Ladder was part of Kjaegaard’s My Private Garden exhibit, which took place at the Designmuseum in 2005. The ladder is manufactured by Trip Trap. Read more about the My Private Garden exhibit at This Link!
Neo Rauch (born April 18th, 1960) was raised in communist East Germany. Upon encountering a united Germany in the early 1990s, Rauch assimilated and parodied the social realist ruins of communist art along with the popular imagery of capitalism. His unusual style, which renders contradictory and often competing sensibilities intelligible and seemingly unified, has given rise to a generation of painters in the Leipzig area as well as a dynamic gallery scene.
For his mixed media assemblage, Koh-i-Noor (2005) Hew Locke (Scottish, born 1959) arranged thousands of cheap plastic toys and trinkets — disposable products of the new global economy — into one edition of a series of portraits of Queen Elizabeth II (entitled the House of Windsor Series), one of which was among the most extraordinary works in the Museum’s exhibition, Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art (2007). Locke, born in Scotland but raised in Guyana, created these works in response to ethnic tensions within contemporary British society, often growing out of Great Britain’s colonial history, with that history now brought home to Britain. Continue reading Hew Locke, Koh-i-Noor, Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II→
Italian automotive excellence meets the art of the street in this bitchen graffiti art car by John “CRASH” Matos. The custom-painted 2005 Ferrari F 430 was on display curbside last evening in front of the Dorian Grey Gallery on East 9th Street as part of the opening reception festivities for its Strada Veloce exhibit, which opened yesterday. Strada Veloce, loosely translated, is Italian for “Fast Road.” Continue reading Ferrari Art Car By John “CRASH” Matos→
