Month: March 2015

Ludwig von Hofmann

Ludwig von Hofmann, “Nudes”, 1905, Pastel on Paper

Ludwig von Hofmann was born in Darmstadt in 1861. His father Karl Hofmann was prime minister of the Grand Duchy of Hesse from 1872 to 1876 and was member of Bismarcks Cabinet as trade secretary.

Ludwig von Hofmann began to study art under his uncle Heinrich Hofmann at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1883. He transferred in 1886 to Karlsruhe, where historical painter Ferdinand Keller was among his teachers. In 1889 Von Hofmann completed his studies in Paris at the renowned Académie Julian. While in Paris, he became acquainted with the local avant-garde and was a strong admirer of the works of mural painter Puvis de Chavannes and printmaker Paul-Albert Besnard.

Ludwig von Hofmanns works adopt inspiration from various tendencies of contemporary art such as Historism, Symbolism and Art Nouveau. Light-flooded Arcadian landscapes with mostly idealized male and female nudes in harmony with nature are his most characteristic motifs.

The Black Ceramic Bowl

Photographer Unknown, (The Black Ceramic Bowl)

And this is something of a paradox, because, in becoming more skillful and more expert, you think you should be making pots more successfully and more safely, but as soon as you rest content with being safe and successful, your pots begin to be static and begin to be dead. They will only stay alive if they are always being brought to birth dangerously.

–Michael Cardew, English Potter

The quote is from Kevin A. Hluch’s “The Art of Contemporary American Pottery

 

Yasmine Galenorn: “Beasts Risen from the Savannas”

Photographer Unknown, (Beasts Risen)

“We are beasts, you know, beasts risen from the savannas and jungles and forests. We have come down from the trees and up out of the water, but you can never, ever fully remove the feral nature from our psyches.”

-Yasmine Galenorn, Totem Magic: Dance of the Shapeshifter

Ben Ashton

 

Ben Ashton: Four Photographs

Ben Ashton is a London-based visual artist specialising in hyper-realist portraiture and ambitious, immersive installation works. His work combines precision in execution with humor and character, balancing emotive response with a strong contextual foundation.

Ashton graduated with a BA at New Castle University in 2006 and completed his MA at the Slade in 2008. Upon finishinb his BA, he started showing and selling his work during the summer of 2006 in several London galleries. In his work Ashton explores the intricacies of living in modern times and experiencing the political and social weight of the past.

The Balcony

Photographer Unknown, (The Balcony), Selfie

“That we can never know,“ answered the wolf angrily. “That’s for the future. But what we can know is the importance of what we owe to the present. Here and now, and nowhere else. For nothing else exists, except in our minds. What we owe to ourselves, and to those we’re bound to. And we can at least hope to make a better future, for everything.”

-David Clement-Davies

Fernando Pessoa: “A Language No One Uses”

Photographer Unknown, (Deep-Blue Pillow), Selfie

“To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
This isn’t the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.”

― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet