Mäda Primavesi (1912–1913) is a portrait painted by Gustav Klimt and it’s one of his most charming and unique works. Here’s the painting’s engaging backstory.
The Subject
Mäda Primavesi was a young girl from a wealthy Viennese family. Her father, Otto Primavesi, was a banker and industrialist, and her mother, Eugenia, was a patron of the arts, so the family moved in the kind of circles where commissioning a portrait from Gustav Klimt made perfect sense. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Gustav Klimt, Mäda Primavesi→
Audrey Flack (1931 – 2024) was the most prominent woman artist to gain recognition as a photorealist in the 1960s and 1970s. She approached the genre of still life, which for centuries had been considered unprestigious by European and North American standards, with irreverent pleasure. Leonardo’s Lady (1974) presents tokens of traditional femininity (a jeweled bubble, embroidered ribbon, pink rose, and pressed powder compact), frivolity (effervescent champagne and shiny objects), and sexuality (a ripe, dripping pear and a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci‘s portrait of Francis I’s reputed mistress). Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Audrey Flack Leonardo’s Lady→
Argentine-born Luis Frangella landed in New York City in 1976 and soon became a recognized figure of the East Village art scene. As a painter, he moved beyond traditional canvases, producing murals throughout the city at unexpected sites like nightclubs and construction zones. His work evokes downtown New York’s artist and queer communities, who congregated and created in public spaces in resistance to the city’s deindustrialization. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: David Wojnarowicz, NYC (Triangle Head) By Luis Frangella→
This monumental portrait of a claimed opera singer Marian Anderson (1944) was part of artist Laura Wheeler Waring’sOutstanding Americans of Negro Origin series, commissioned by the Harmon Foundation for an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Anderson had become a celebrated star of the concert stage in Europe, where Waring first saw her perform in 1916. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Portrait of Marian Anderson By Laura Wheeler Waring→
It is known in some circles that, back in my Rock Journalist days, my very first in-person interview was with the walking enigma that is Marilyn Manson. The not-yet Antichrist Superstar was 24 years old the time time and I was much younger than I am now. Despite the fact that he is not so well-liked these days — owing to certain abhorrent behavior which we do not condone by the inclusion of this likeness of him as this week’s Pink Thing — Manson was very polite to me and an excellent interview subject on whom to ‘cut my teeth,’ as they say. Too bad he turned out to be such a dick. Continue reading Pink Thing of The Day: Marilyn Manson Glamour Shot By Scott Scheidly→
