Portraits of husband and wife Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson by American Painter and Photographer Chuck Close. Photos By Gail.
Tag Archives: painter
Recommended Viewing: Full Circle, The Kostabi Story
The art world is filled with enigmas, and that’s what keeps it exciting. This week, I attended a screening of a new documentary film about American contemporary artist/painter Mark Kostabi, called Full Circle, The Kostabi Story, directed by Italian filmmaker Sabrina Digregorio. The film is amazing, but before I get into it, I need to get something off my chest about another excellent Kostabi documentary from 2011, called Con Artist. Because, to me, Full Circle felt very much like the bookend to Con Artist, though I am sure that was unintentional.
While Con Artist did an excellent job of distilling Mark Kostabi’s colorful life, undeniable scenester status and celebrated art career up to that point, the title of the film referenced the fact that Kostabi, like so many modern art superstars, employs a staff to execute his paintings. I’ve met Mark Kostabi casually a few times (he is extremely friendly and approachable) and even visited his Chelsea based studio, Kostabi World, so it’s not like his process is a huge, dirty secret.
Far from it. This “revelation” is not at all scandalous when you consider that Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, among many others, employ assistants and craftsmen to execute their projects, without being subject to serious flack as to whether this step in the creative process detracts from their legitimate artistic credibility. Hell, even Michelangelo had a staff. Con Artist is an enjoyable film, but the filmmakers definitely had an agenda, and I’m still not sure if Kostabi was complicit in the way it came off. I could have asked him about it, but I never did.
Post Continues, After The Jump!
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Picasso’s The Dreamer
Art By Pablo Picasso, Photo By Gail
The Dreamer, on exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, is one of my favorite Picasso paintings.
Erik Parker’s Bye Bye Babylon at Paul Kasmin Gallery
New Jekyll Island Club By Erik Parker
Summer may be quickly fading away, but German-born artist Erik Parker has brilliantly immortalized the feeling of the endless summer in his new series of paintings, Bye Bye Babylon, up now at Paul Kasmin Gallery on 10th Avenue. On view in the gallery are eleven of Parker’s 2012 still-life and jungle-landscape paintings, which all incorporate vibrant, fluorescent colors and fun, almost cartoonist shapes. Some of Parker’s images reminded me of the wildly hallucinatory animation on Adult Swim’s subversive series, SuperJail. If you’ve seen that show, and see Parker’s work in this exhibit, you will know what I mean by that comparison
Colombier Beach
Updating these traditional art-historical genres through the pictorial idioms and sly humor of satirical cartoons, psychedelia and underground comic books, Parker’s paintings provide vistas into brilliantly colored worlds of semi-sentient flora and idiosyncratic geometries.
For Parker, creating the jungle paintings provides him with a way to escape into custom-made exotic locales without having to leave his Brooklyn studio.
New Bimini Trail
He draws inspiration from the imaginary landscapes of Henri Rousseau — who never left his native France, and Joseph Yoakum — who mixed his memories of his own travels into his visualizations of unknown cities and countries. In Parker’s fantastical scenes, fleshy, claw-like leaves and snaking vines part to reveal panoramas of placid rivers and distant mountains.
Detail from New Bimini Trail
Lending a sense of tongue-in-cheek surrealism to Parker’s compositions, the leaves and vines cast unrealistic shadows onto the sea and sky behind them. Following the logic of cartoons and dreams, these jungle scenes and still-life paintings feel seductive and eerie; visually sensible but also askew.
Analog Babylon
Trust me that photos cannot fully capture the intensely bright colors of these canvases. If you’re intrigued at all, do make it over to Paul Kasmin while the show is up.
Erik Parker’s Bye Bye Babylon will be on exhibit through October 13, 2012 at Paul Kasmin Gallery, Located at 293 Tenth Ave, Street Level, New York City. Gallery Hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM.
Babylon Chatta
Bold Hype Gallery Presents Archaic Ornaments By Beau Stanton
Foreground Painting: The Reclamation, Oil on Canvas By Beau Stanton (All Images Courtesy of Bold Hype Gallery)
Local Surrealist painter Beau Stanton has been an up-and-comer on the New York art scene for a few years now, gaining notoriety through his participation in various group shows on the way to achieving his first New York solo exhibit, up now at Bold Hype Gallery in Chelsea. Beau’s latest collection of paintings, presented under the name Archaic Ornaments, combines classical oil painting with his intricate silk-screened patterns “inspired by pre-modern architecture, letterpress printing designs and decayed infrastructure.” The details of the silk screens come into play especially on Stanton’s layered paintings, such as the series of skull images seen in the photo above, and they really need to be seen up close to be fully appreciated.
Continue reading Bold Hype Gallery Presents Archaic Ornaments By Beau Stanton