Month: June 2015

Tenmyouya Hisashi

Paintings by Tenmyouya Hisashi

Tenmyouya Hisashi (天明屋尚, born 1966 in Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese contemporary artist.

In 2000, Tenmyouya Hisashi instituted his unique Japanese painting “Neo Nihonga” which revives Japanese traditional paintings as a contemporary art. He also created in that year his new style called  “Butouha” which, through his paintings, shows a resistant attitude for the authoritative art system.

In 2010 Hisashi proposed a new Japanese art scheme named “BASARA” which is extravagant and extraordinary in style, embodiying a Samurai aesthetic like “Basara” in the Nanboku dynasty era and the “Kabuki-mono” aesthetic prevalent at the end of Sengoku era.

Hisashi currently lives and works in Saitama, Japan and is represented by the Mizuma Art Gallery in Tokyo.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, “Amelie”

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, “Amelie”

“Amélie” is a fanciful comedy about a young woman who discretely orchestrates the lives of the people around her, creating a world exclusively of her own making. Shot in over 80 Parisian locations, acclaimed director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (“Delicatessen”; “The City of Lost Children”) invokes his incomparable visionary style to capture the exquisite charm and mystery of modern-day Paris through the eyes of a beautiful ingenue.

Release date: November 16, 2001 (USA)
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Featured song: La Valse d’Amélie (orchestra version)

A great film on the top of my favorites list- great photography, especially with the use of color filters; great soundtrack; actors who really know their characters; and a funny but heart touching story.

Joan Ponç

Joan Ponç, “Fisik”, 1981, Oil on Canvas

Joan Ponç was born in Barcelona in 1927. His training as an artist began by studying painting in the workshop of Spainish painter and draughtsman Ramon Rogent. Ponç presented his first exhibition at the Sala Arte de Bilbao at the age of twenty.

Soon after his exhibition, Ponç founded the magazine “Dau al Set”, along with other great artists such as Joan Brossa, Modest Cuixart, Arnau Puig, Joan-Josep Antoni Tapies and Tharrats. This magazine meant the reviving of the creative impulse in post-war decayed Barcelona, Over the next couple of years, Ponç actively interacted and collaborated with forerunners of the Catalan avant-garde, such as Modest Cuixart and Joan Miró. Though the Dau al Set group ultimately disbanded in 1954, Ponç continued presenting his own artwork until 1980.

On April 4, 1984, Ponç died of a heart attack while at his home inSaint-Paul-de-Vence, France. Four days later, he was returned to his residence and workshop in La Roca del Vallés, near Barcelona, for burial.

My thanks to https://pixography.tumblr.com

Paul Hannon

Paintings by Paul Hannon

Born in 1952, Paul Hannon is an American born artist, who lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he paints urban and coastal scenes of Atlantic Canada. Hannon’s primary interest lies in the observation of light and its influence on form within the landscape. He responds to low-angled, northern light with long, deep shadows, and the depiction of this light plays a critical role in creating the mood of his narrative urban portraits.

Hannon cites Edward Hopper as a significant influence, and his painting practice follows the tradition of the Ashcan School of Art, an art movement best know for a style of oil painting that portrayed the realism of everyday life in New York.

Irrepressibles, “In This Shirt”

Irrepressibles, “In This Shirt”- presented in the PAG Film “The Lady is Dead”

On the January 11, 2010, The Irrepressibles released their debut studio album, “Mirror Mirror”, a collection of 12 baroque pop songs produced by Dimitri Tikovoi and William Turner Duffin, and written by Jamie McDermott. The album features the single “In This Shirt”.

“Mirror Mirror” received critical acclaim. The Guardian called it “theatrical and very different, a ripe, colourful riposte to all that is Cowell” and The Independent described it as “a dramatic soundscape dripping with echoes of the Weimar Republic and la belle époque.”

“In This Shirt” garnered critical and public acclaim after it was used as the soundtrack for short film, “The Lady Is Dead”, by Israeli production company PAG Films, described by Sundance Channel as “fantastic”.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Albert Janesch

Albert Janesch. “Water Sports”, 1937, Tempera on Canvas, 153 x 208 cm. Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

Austrian portrait and genre painter Albert Janesch studied in Wien, Vienna, from 1904-12. During World War One,  he was an official war artist, as he was during World War Two in France, Russia and Greece. After 1945 Janesch produced murals for the “Iron Room” of the Museum of Military History located in Wien, which he finished in 1954.

One of his works, “Water Sports”, was submitted for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It was a representation of the perfect beauty of a race steeled in battle and sport, inspired not by antiquity or classicism but by the pulsing life of current events. Adolf Hitler took this painting for his private collection.