Month: February 2016

Edward Middleton Manigault

Paintings by Middleton Manigault

When Middleton Manigault inadvertently starved himself to death at the age of 35 in an attempt to “see colors not perceptible to the physical eye,” he ended a short but distinguished career as a pioneering modern artist. Hollis Taggart Galleries presented the exhibition called “ Middleton Manigault: Visionary Modernist”, the first major exhibition to present the eclectic, highly personal creations of this previously neglected modernist master. It featured approximately 50 rarely exhibited works, including oil paintings, watercolors, pastels, etchings, wood sculpture, and ceramics, and showcases masterpieces loaned from both public and private collections across the United States and Canada, including several seminal works such as “The Clown,” which was exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show.  This traveling exhibition was organized by the Columbus Museum of Art in cooperation with Hollis Taggart Galleries.

Manigault’s contributions to the history of Modernism have been largely overlooked because of his early death, his reclusive lifestyle, and the undocumented dispersal of much of his work.  Furthermore, the artist, suffering from depression and fits of hysteria, destroyed a large number of his paintings shortly before his death in 1922. All of these factors have resulted in a lack of public and scholarly attention devoted to Manigault’s art until recently.

Manigault’s career was characterized by incessant experimentation, and his works are remarkable for their decorative sense and imaginative spirit. Unlike many artists of the period, whose reputations rested on a signature style, Manigault found inspiration in an exciting range of artistic tendencies that flourished during Modernism’s formative years. His work exemplifies—indeed, encapsulates—the experimental nature at the heart of modern art.

Dead Man’s Bones, “My Body’s a Zombie for You”

Dead Man’s Bones, “My Body’s a Zombie for You”

Dead Man’s Bones is a rock duo consisting of actor Ryan Gosling and his friend Zach Shields. Their first album, Dead Man’s Bones, was released on 6 October 2009 through ANTI- Records. The entire album is a collaboration with the Silverlake Conservatory Children’s Choir —started by Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea— from Los Angeles, California. Gosling performs under the alias “Baby Goose”.

When Shields and Gosling met in 2005 they discovered a mutual obsession with the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland and decided to write love stories about ghosts and monsters. The pair chose to play all the instruments on the record, even those they had never touched before. They also imposed rules on themselves during the recording process, such as not playing with a click track, and trying to do no more than three takes on any song, letting any imperfections highlight the strengths of the music.

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

Ikebana

Ikebana: The Art of Japanese Arrangement

Ikebana is a disciplined art form in which nature and humanity are brought together. Contrary to the idea of floral arrangement as a collection of particolored or multicolored arrangement of blooms, ikebana often emphasizes other areas of the plant, such as its stems and leaves, and draws emphasis toward shape, line, form. Though ikebana is a creative expression, it has certain rules governing its form. The artist’s intention behind each arrangement is shown through a piece’s color combinations, natural shapes, graceful lines, and the usually implied meaning of the arrangement.

Another aspect present in ikebana is its employment of minimalism. That is, an arrangement may consist of only a minimal number of blooms interspersed among stalks and leaves. The structure of a Japanese flower arrangement is based on a scalene triangle delineated by three main points, usually twigs, considered in some schools to symbolize heaven, earth, and man and in others sun, moon, and earth. The container is a key element of the composition, and various styles of pottery may be used in their construction.

Alireza Saadatmand

Alireza Saadatmand, “Soil of Road”, 2010, Oil on canvas, 50 x 50 cm, The Islamic Arts Museum, Malaysia

Ali Reza Saadatmand is a painter, calligraphist, photographer from Iran. In pursuit of achieving a new and contemporary expression, he has benefited
from old calligraphies and plain symbolic forms. His intent is not to recreate the past but to show humans in contrast with tradition and modernity, This sometimes leads him to abstraction and symbolic forms.

He has never considered handwriting as a decorative element. Every time he
works with it, he finds new compositions which are rooted in the 1000 years
of his fore-fathers tradition but which simultaneously face the future. In his mind Saadatmand analyzes the appearance of the words and creates abstract, personal and aesthetic forms extracted from the patterns,

Aikido

Aikido: Staff

Aikido is a modern Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba as a synthesis of his martial studies, philosophy, and religious beliefs. Aikido is often translated as “the way of unifying (with) life energy” or as “the way of harmonious spirit.” Ueshiba’s goal was to create an art that practitioners could use to defend themselves while also protecting their attacker from injury.

Aikido techniques consist of entering and turning movements that redirect the momentum of an opponent’s attack, and a throw or joint lock that terminates the technique.

Aikido derives mainly from the martial art of Daitō-ryū Aiki-jūjutsu, but began to diverge from it in the late 1920s, partly due to Ueshiba’s involvement with the Ōmoto-kyō religion. Ueshiba’s early students’ documents bear the term aiki-jūjutsu.

Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton, “People of Chilmark (Figure Composition)”, 1920, Oil on Canvas, 166.5 x 197.3 cm, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC.

Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, Thomas Hart Benton was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His fluid, sculpted figures in his paintings showed everyday people in scenes of life in the United States. Though his work is strongly associated with the Midwestern United States, he studied in Paris, lived in New York City for more than 20 years and painted scores of works there, summered for 50 years on Martha’s Vineyard off the New England coast, and also painted scenes of the American South and West.

In ”The People of Chilmark”, one of his earliest paintings, Benton posed his wife, her brother and friends for the figure composition. He explained that the swirling assemblage of figures was a continuation of his Renaissance studies.

Surrealism in Photography: Ten Black and White Images

Surrealism in Photography: Ten Black and White Images

Surrealism was officially launched as a movement with the publication of poet André Breton’s first Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924. The Surrealists did not rely on reasoned analysis or sober calculation; on the contrary, they saw the forces of reason blocking the access routes to the imagination. Their efforts to tap the creative powers of the unconscious set Breton and his companions on a path that carried them through the territory of dreams, intoxication, chance, sexual ecstasy, and madness. The images obtained by such means, whether visual or literary, were prized precisely to the degree that they captured these moments of psychic intensity in provocative forms of unrestrained, convulsive beauty.

Photography came to occupy a central role in Surrealist activity. In the works of Man Ray and Maurice Tabard, the use of such procedures as double exposure, combination printing, montage, and solarization dramatically evoked the union of dream and reality. Other photographers used techniques such as rotation or distortion to render their images uncanny. Hans Bellmer obsessively photographed the mechanical dolls he fabricated himself, creating strangely sexualized images, while the painter René Magritte used the camera to create photographic equivalents of his paintings.