Tag Archives: pennsylvania academy of the fine arts

Modern Art Monday Presents: Still Life With Cake By Raphaelle Peale

Still Life with Cake
Photo By Gail

Still Life With Cake (1818), a typical still life by Raphaelle Peale (17741825), the son of Charles Willson Peale, may have been the picture exhibited in 1819 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts as Still Life—Wine, Cakes, Grapes, &c. A similar picture dating from the same year is in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Peale’s tightly-grouped still lifes are often permeated with a delicate melancholy akin to that which characterized the life of the artist; he was an alcoholic who suffered the effects of arsenic and mercury poisoning caused by his work as a taxidermist in his father’s museum. His spare, essential style may have been influenced by the Spanish still lifes he studied in Mexico and by the works of Juan Sanchez Cotan, exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1818.

Photographed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.

Claes Oldenburg’s Monumental Paint Brush Sculpture in Downtown Philadelphia!

Claes Oldenburg Paint Torch Sculpture
All Photos By Gail

Philadelphia has no shortage of impressive public artworks and engaging street art scattered all over the city, and it’s fun to spend a day just wandering the different neighborhoods and checking it all out if you happen be visiting. Continue reading Claes Oldenburg’s Monumental Paint Brush Sculpture in Downtown Philadelphia!

Cool Video: KAWS Shows Off Newest Installation at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts



Street Artist turned fine artist and designer KAWS (Brian Donnelly) is the subject of the above video feature created by Mass Appeal (a digital content channel platform). Kaws is ‘caus-ing” a bit of a commotion just recently with his design for the MTV Awards stage and a concurrent exhibit at Mary Boone Gallery in Manhattan, but this video focuses on what is his largest installation to date, now on exhibit at the historic Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

This exhibit at PAFA says so much about the evolution of street art to fine art, as KAWS, speaks about hosting the biggest exhibit of his career in one of the oldest museums in the US. At PAFA, his modern sculptures, paintings, and designs are displayed in installations around other famous artworks from the 18th and 19th centuries – creating a distinct view of how far art culture has come. In this fun video, KAWS discusses his approach to the installation, how the project came to be, how he worked with the space and the materials he used.

KAWS-@-PAFA-Pennsylvania-Academy-of-Fine-Arts
KAWS Installation View at PAFA (Image Source)

KAWS at PAFA will be on Exhibit Through January 5th, 2014, while his Sculpture at the Building’s Facade will be on Display Into August of 2014. Find Out More About the Exhibit, and Get Museum Hours and Information, at This Link.