Month: November 2015

Cesar Santos

Cesar Santos, “Nude Study”, Oil on Canvas

Cesar Santos studied at Miami Dade College and the New World School of the Arts before travelling to Florence, where he trained at the Angel Academy of Art under the tutelage of Michael John Angel, a student of Pietro Annigoni. Santos returned to Miami, where he developed his philosophy of marrying both the classical and the modern juxtaposed within one painting.

Santos’s influences range from the Renaissance to the masters of the nineteenth century to Modernism. With superb technique, he infuses a harmony between the natural and the conceptual to create works that are provocative and dramatic.

Cesar Santos  has been the recipient of numerous accolades including a first place award from a competition sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Santos has had exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America, including the Villa Bardini Museum in Florence, Italy, the National Gallery in Costa Rica and the Frost Art Museum in Miami, Florida.

Xhxix

Digital Paintings by Xhxix

Mysterious Japanese artist 非 creates digital paintings that look like translucent and intricate watercolours.  His/her identity is a closely guarded secret and the artist confesses to not liking him/herself enough to associate his/her personality with the work.  A major feature in 非’s imagery is that it pulsates and flickers with pastel and psychedelic colours that articulate variation in skin tone, bruising, geometric patterns in confetti and strangely surreal fireworks, dripped paint marks or ornaments.  They seem to vibrate and osculate and this injects and peculiar sense of life into the static images.

Although 非 admits to being an under-confident draftsman on paper, he instead opts for digital techniques that erase mistakes without trace and result in a clean finish.  His subjects are young men, battered and mottled, sickly and altered.  Often their features are obscured or contorted and when their faces are explained in detail, their features are bloodshot and wounded as they gaze out of their picture plains, staring directly almost appealing to the viewer. 非’s figures seem lost in contemplation and introspection.  Meditations on self harm, sickness or societal wounds that shape a person in time, they seem like studies of hurt and records of isolation.

Despite this, they are beautiful-lean, fit and similar to male models. They represent the loneliness of a particular stage in a man’s life, namely his teens which 非 sees as being the most difficult time to reach out and communicate anything to the rest of the world.  Women, in 非’s eyes, lead a happy existence and it is only by using the male form that he is able to express feelings of isolation, detachment and exclusion.

Thanks to https://guliverlooks.wordpress.com

Mikhail Vrubel

Mikhail Vrubel, “Demon Seated”, 1890, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The Demon, as presented in art, has become a theme often employed to represent a madness that has developed within the artist. This demon can serve as both a muse and a destructive force for the artist who cannot find a means to control it. Mikhail Vrubel looked to the Demon throughout his life; adapting him to his constantly changing world. The development of Vrubel’s Demon is best seen in two works that almost bookend his career: “Demon Seated” of 1890 and “Demon Downcast” painted in 1902.

The figure of the Demon is sitting atop a mountain. There is tension in his muscles and interlocked fingers which sharply contrasts with the slumped over body and melancholy expression of his face. He appears passive and introverted yet proud, solitary, and sensitive. He is the antithesis of the feminine, yet possesses feminine attributes in the long hair, soft face, and pouty mouth. His eyes are filled with a longing for love in a cold and alienated world. Vrubel described this Demon as “a spirit uniting in itself masculine and feminine qualities…a spirit, not so much evil as suffering and sorrowing, but in all that a powerful spirit…a majestic spirit”.

Crispijn de Passe the Elder

Crispijn de Passe the Elder, “Apollo, Sol”

Crispijn van de Passe the Elder was a Dutch publisher and engraver and founder of a dynasty of engravers comparable to the Wierix family and the Sadelers, though mostly at a more mundane commercial level. Most of their engravings were portraits, book title-pages, and the like, with relatively few grander narrative subjects. As with the other dynasties, their style is very similar, and hard to tell apart in the absence of a signature or date, or evidence of location. Many of the family could produce their own designs, and have left drawings.

Amo Rafael Minkkinen

Photography;  Self Portraits in Nature by Amo Rafael Minkkinen

Finnish-American photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen has been capturing self-portraits of his nude body in natural surroundings for the better part of five decades. Minkkinen fully merges his limbs and torso like a chameleon, blurring the lines between where the world ends and his body begins.

The methods used to create these bold and uninhibited shots pre-date the use of Photoshop by decades, instead relying on a simple 9-second shutter release that allows Minkkinen to quickly pose for each shot. What may appear as a simply composed photo with fortuitous timing, is often the result of Minkkinen taking dangerous risks as he submerges himself in strong currents, buries himself in ice, or balances precariously on the edge of a cliff.

At the age of 70, Minkkinen was just awarded the 2015 Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and is currently finishing work on his 8th book. His first-ever solo show was in November of 2015 in Chicago at the Catherine Edelman Gallery and entitled “7 8 9 0 1″.

“Many of my photographs are difficult to make. Some can even be dangerous. I do not want to have someone else coming in harm’s way taking the risks I need to take: to lean out off a cliff or stay underwater for the sake of my picture. We control how much pain we can tolerate; such information is unknowable by anyone else. Some of my pictures might look simple, but in reality they can test the limits of what a human body is capable of or willing to risk.” -Amo Rafael Minkkinen

Sköll and Hati

Dobie, “Sköll and Hati”

In light of the super blood moon eclipse from this week, here’s the Norse mythological tale about two wolves who wish to eat the Sun and Moon.

The monstrous wolf Fenrir had two sons; Sköll (Old Norse for “Treachery”) and Hati (“He Who Hates, Enemy”).

Sköll chases the Sun, and Hati, running ahead of the Sun, goes after the Moon. When either are caught, there is an eclipse. When this happens, Vikings used to rush to rescue the Sun or Moon by making as much noise as they can in hopes of scaring off the wolves.

Illustration by Dobie

Sam Smith, “Stay With Me”

Sam Smith, “Stay With Me”

Samuel Frederick “Sam” Smith is an English singer-songwriter. He rose to fame in October 2012 when he was featured on Disclosure’s breakthrough single “Latch”, which peaked at number eleven on the UK Singles Chart. His subsequent feature—on Naughty Boy’s “La La La”—earned him his first number one single in May 2013.

In December 2014, Smith was nominated for six Grammy Awards, and at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2015 he won four: Best New Artist, “Stay with Me” for Record of the Year and Song of the Year, and In the Lonely Hour for Best Pop Vocal Album. At the 2015 Brit Awards, he won the awards for British Breakthrough Act and Global Success. In October 2015, Smith’s composition “Writing’s on the Wall” for the James Bond film Spectre was released, for which he received a Guinness World Record when it became the first Bond theme song to reach number one in the UK.

In May 2014, Smith revealed to the public that he is gay. He acknowledged a relationship—since ended—with actor and model Jonathan Zeizel. At the 2015 Grammy Awards, where he won four categories, he said, “I would like to thank the man that I fell in love with last year – the man who this album is about. Thank you so much for breaking my heart, because you got me four Grammys!”.

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

Herman Melville: “There is a Wisdom that is Woe”

Photographer Unknown, (The Catskill Eagle)

“There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.”

-Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Los Vivancos : Extreme Flamenco Fusion

Los Vivancos : Extreme Flamenco Fusion

After receiving a long and complete artistic formation in dance, music and martial arts, and after collaborating with foremost national and international dance companies, Elias, Judah, Josua, Cristo, Israel, Aaron and Josue came together in 2007 to create what has been considered to be the musical scenic phenomena of this decade; Los Vivancos.With their first creation “7BROTHERS” produced, directed, choreographed by them and with their own musical compositions, the Vivancos brothers have appeared in more than 35 countries performing for over one million spectators worldwide.

Los Vivancos have also been invited to important international events by renowned figures and artists like Antonio Banderas or Princess Stephanie of Monaco, French singer and songwriter Mylene Farmer for whom they choreographed in her concert “Avant Que L’Ombre” performing in front of over 18.000 persons at the Bercy Stadium in Paris, or Dortmund’s Symphonic Orchestra with which they performed at the Konthertus Haus in Germany.

Great show, great dance, and hot guys also. Definitely go see them if they are in your city. Un show que se embed sí en su memoria.

Paco Peña, “Flamencura”

Paco Pena, “Flamencura”

Paco Peña is a Spanish flamenco composer and guitarist. He is regarded as one of the world’s foremost traditional flamenco players.

Born in Córdoba, Spain as Francisco Peña Pérez, Paco Peña began learning to play the guitar from his brother at age six and made his first professional appearance at twelve. Encouraged by his family, he left home and began performing throughout Spain as part of a government-sponsored folk music and dance program. This led to calls from professional flamenco companies in Madrid and the Costa Brava, where Peña established himself as a highly regarded accompanist to flamenco dance and singing.

Peña also created the Centro Flamenco Paco Peña in Córdoba, and was responsible for the founding of the now-celebrated annual Córdoba Guitar Festival, which has seen appearances by other flamenco greats such as Manolo Sanlúcar and Paco de Lucía. In 1997 Peña was named Oficial de la Cruz de la Orden del Mérito Civil by King Juan Carlos of Spain.

His most famous compositions include his Misa Flamenca (a flamenco Mass), and Requiem for the Earth, both of which have received great critical acclaim.

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