Month: August 2016

Hidden Cameras, “Carpe Jugular”

Hidden Cameras, “Carpe Jugular”

The Hidden Cameras are a Canadian indie pop band. Fronted by singer-songwriter Joel Gibb, the band consists of a varying roster of musicians who play what Gibb once described as “gay church folk music”. Their live performances have been elaborate, high-energy shows, featuring go-go dancers in balaclavas, a choir, and a string section.

The band’s new album Age was released in January 2014. The lead single “Gay Goth Scene” was released in July, 2013. The video for the single was directed by Kai Stänicke, who received the “Short Film Award for Human Rights” at San Marino International Film Festival awards, “Tadgell’s Bluebell Honor Award”, being named “Best Short Film About/For Youth” at the 16th Auburn International Film Festival for Children and Young Adults in Sydney, Australia, and best German short at the International Queer Film Festival Hamburg, Germany.

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

Alexandra Kehayoglou

Alexandra Kehayoglou, Landscape Carpets and Rugs

Using scraps leftover thread from her family’s carpet factory in Buenos Aires, artist Alexandra Kehayoglou embarks on a laborious hand-tufting process to fabricate wool carpets and rugs that mimic natural textures like moss, water, trees, and pastures. The carpets balance form and function and can powerfully transform an entire room into a lush meadow dotted with pools of water and tufts of grass. Many of her works even function as part tapestry and flow from walls to floor, or work as covers for chairs or stools.

Reblogged with thanks to http://www.thisiscolossal.com

Ichwan Noor

Ichwan Noor, Volkswagen Spheres and Cubes

Jakatara- based Indonesian sculptor Ichwan Noor takes the iconic components of vintage VW vehicles and warps them into perfect spheres and cubes. The large-scale sculptures leave the uncanny impression of being instantly recognizable, yet leaving you wondering just how the artist constructed them. It’s the immediate familiarity that initially attracted Noor to using the cars as a medium in the first place. “I see the VW Beetle as one of the most successful designs, one that people will always be familiar with,” he says about the ongoing sculpture series. The artist most recently exhibited a new Beetle Sphere at Art Stage Jakarta in 2016.

Robert McCammon, “The Wolf’s Hour”

Robert McCammon, “The Wolf’s Hour”, 1989, Grafton Books

This novel was a dramatic departure for horror writer McCammon. A blend of WWII espionage thriller and werewolf-powered dark fantasy, the story revolves around Russian-born, British Secret Service operative Michael Gallatin, who just happens to be a werewolf. Highly principled and deeply introspective, Gallatin is a tormented soul struggling to understand who (or what) he is. Intricately plotted and meticulously described, this suspense thriller offers up a unique take on the werewolf mythos.

Claude Buck

Claude Buck, “Sunburst”, Gouache, Watercolor, Pencil, Pen and Colored Ink on Paper, 1913, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, Washington DC

Claude Buck was born in New York City on July 3, 1890. His father was a traditionally trained, commercial artist, and introduced Buck to drawing at age 4. The young Buck copied Greek classics at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at age 14 entered the National Academy of Design, taking classes in still life with Emil Carlsen, figure drawing with Francis Jones, and figure painting George DeForest Brush. He studied there until age 22, receiving eight prizes. Buck then studied in Munich and upon his return began a busy schedule of exhibitions.

He moved to Chicago in 1919, teaching painting for some years at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago (SAIC), and becoming a leading member of an avant-garde symbolist artists’ group known as the Introspectives. The group, whose members shared an approach to expressing subjective emotion and experience in their work, included, both Rudolph Weisenborn and Emil Armin. Buck, a modernist, was influenced by writers Edgar Allen Poe and William Blake and eccentric visionary painters Ralph Blakelock and Albert Pinkham Ryder.

He often depicted allegories and literary themes drawn from Romantic sources such as Poe’s poetry, operas by Richard Wagner, as well as classical mythology and the New Testament. He made highly finished still lifes and “hyperrealistic” portraits to support himself and his family. Buck spent the last years of his life in Santa Cruz, and is often considered a California artist despite his deep connections to Chicago.

Dick Grayson

Artists Unknown, Dick Grayson

The youngest in a family of acrobats known as the “Flying Graysons,” Dick Grayson watched as a mafia boss killed his parents in order to export money from the circus that employed them. Bruce Wayne, secretly the vigilante Batman, took him in as his legal ward after witnessing their deaths, and eventually as his sidekick, Robin.

Throughout Dick’s adolescence, Batman and Robin were inseparable. However, as Dick grew older and spent more time as the leader of the Teen Titans, he decided to take on the identity of Nightwing to assert his independence (other teenaged heroes would later fill in the role of Robin). His Nightwing persona was created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez, and first appeared in Tales of the Teen Titans #44 (July 1984).

Otto Hettner

Otto Hettner, “Rowers”, Pre 1931, Oil on Canvas

Born in Dresden in January of 1875, Hermann Otto Hettner was a German illustrator, painter, engraver, and sculptor. Between 1897 and 1904, he studied at Karlsruhe’s Academy of Fine Arts, under painter and sculptor Robert Pötzelberger, and later at the Académie Julian in Paris. 

In 1904, Otto Hettner relocated to Florence, Italy, where, in October of 1905, Jeanne Alexandrine Thibert gave birth to his son Roland. He later married Jeanne Thibert in London in May of 1907; a daughter, Sabine Hettner, who would become a noted landscape and portrait painter, was born the following year. With his family, Hettner returned to Dresden in 1913 and studied at its Academy of Fine Arts. In 1916, he became an executive committee member of the Free Secession, an association of modern artists in Berlin, and,  in  1917, became Director of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where he taught as a Full Professor until 1927. 

Hettner illustrated various books for publishers, including art dealer Paul Cassirer’s Pan-Presse imprint, Avalun-Verlag in Dresden, and Marses-Gesellschaft, an imprint collaboration between art historian Julius Meier-Graefe and avant-garde publisher Reinhard Piper. Among these works were lithographic illustrations done for Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s 1923 “Florindo”, a  1923 publication of the ancient Greek novel by Longus entitled “Daphnis and Chloe”, Spanish writer Miguel de Cervnates’s “La Galatea”, and author-journalist Heinrich von Kleist’s “The Earthquake of Chile”. 

Hermann Otto Hettner passed away in Dresden in April of 1931. His works are in private collections and can be seen in the public collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco.

Insert Image: Otto Hettner, “Bogenschütze”, 1901, Oil on Canvas,  100 x 80 cm, Kulturhistorische Museum, Magdeburg