Month: June 2015

Do Ho Suh

Do Ho Suh, “Some/One”, Stainless Steel Military Dog Tags, Nickel-Plated Copper Sheets, Steel Structure, Glass Fiber Reinforced Resin, Rubber Sheets.

Do Ho Suh’s “Some/One” was installed in the Korean Pavilion at the 2001 Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy.

“Some/One” evolved from my first sculpture, “Metal Jacket”. I had a dream one day after I finished “Metal Jacket” that I wanted to turn it into some kind of larger installation. The dream was quite vivid. It was night, and I was outside a stadium, approaching it from the distance, and I saw a light in the stadium. So I thought, ‘There’s some kind of activity going on there.’ And as I approached, I started to hear clicking sounds, like the sound when metal pieces touch together. It was like there were thousands of crickets in the stadium. And then I entered the stadium.

I walked slowly, but I went into the stadium on the ground level. And then I saw this reflecting surface and I realized I was stepping on these metal pieces that were military dog tags. And they were vibrating slightly, vibrating and touching each other. The sound was from that. From afar I saw the central figure in the center of the stadium. It tried to go out of the stadium but it couldn’t because the train of its garment, which was made of dog tags, was just too big. It was just too big to pull all the dog tags.

So that was a dream and the image that I got. After that I made a small drawing about this vast field of military dog tags on the ground and a small figure in the center. Obviously I could not create the piece exactly as I dreamt it, but that was the kind of impact I wanted to create through that piece.” —Do Ho Suh

George Tooker

Paintings by George Tooker

George Clair Tooker, Jr. was an American figurative painter whose works are associated with the Magic Realism and Social Realism movements. Working with the then-revitalized tradition of egg tempera, Tooker addressed issues of modern-day alienation with subtly eerie and often visually literal depictions of social withdrawal and isolation. He was one of nine recipients of the National Medal of Arts in 2007.

Images from Top to Bottom;

George Tooker, “The Subway”, 1950, Egg Tempera on Composition Board, 46 x 92 cm, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

George Tooker, “Divers”, 1962, Egg Tempera on Gessoed Panel, 30 x 46 cm, Private Collection

George Tooker, “Lunch”, 1964, Egg Tempera on Gessoed Panel,  50.8 x 66 cm, Columbus Museum of Art

George Tooker, “Window II”, 1956, Egg Tempera on Panel, 61 x 46 cm, Collection of James and Barbara Palmer

Thomas Dekker: “In Peace, An Ornament”

Photographer Unknown, (Dark hair), Selfie

“Long hair will make thee look dreafully to thine enemies, and manly to thy friends: it is, in peace, an ornament; in war, a strong helmet; it…deadens the leaden thump of a bullet: in winter, it is a warm nightcap; in summer, a cooling fan of feathers.”

― Thomas Dekker, The Guls Horne Booke, 1609 

Valerie Ganz

Valerie Ganz, “Miners Changing After Work”, Date Unknown, Mixed Media, 53 x 44 cm, Private Collection

Born in 1936 in Swansea, Wales, Valerie Ganz studied art in her hometown, later working as a teacher and lecturer. She left teaching in 1973 to concentrate on full-time painting. Ganz became known as one of Wales’ most intrepid and original painters. Fascinated by the working life of Welsh coal miners, she regularly entered the mines the paint them as they worked and gathered.

Ganz eventually moved to Six Bells, Abertillery, where she took a house and studio to spend a year painting at the Six Bells Colliery. Her work formed the basis of many exhibitions, particularly the “Mining in Art” exhibition in 1986 at the Glynn Vivian Gallery in Swansea. Ganz also spent a year painting daily at the Central School of Ballet in London and painted behind the scenes at the Moscow State Circus. She died in September of 2015 at the age of seventy-nine, after struggling with ill health.

Hermann Lismann

Hermann Lismann, “Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas

Born in Munich, Hermann Lismann belonged to the group of artists that met regularly at the Café du Dôme. After serving in the German army in World War I, he settled in Frankfurt, where many of his works were acquired by the local museum, and where for several years he taught aesthetics at the university.

After the rise of Hitler Lismann immigrated to France, residing in Tours. He was interned by the French at the outbreak of World War II as an enemy alien, but managed to escape to Montauban near Toulouse, in the unoccupied zone. However, in 1943 Lismann was deported to his death in the extermination camp of Majdanek.

Lismann’s post-impressionist works in the Staedelsches Museum at Frankfurt and in the museum of Wuppertal, were confiscated by the Nazis and disappeared. Nevertheless, a memorial exhibition held by the Frankfurt Kunstverein in 1959 was able to assemble 132 of his works.