Tag: sculpture

Christo

Christo, Floating Mastaba in London, Project Design, 2018, Pencil, Charcoal, Wax Crayon, Enamel Paint, Hand-Drawn Map on Vellum

Artist Christo’s Mastaba project for London’s Hyde Park’s serpentine lake will float on the lake from June 18 to September 23, 2018.

Built by a team of experienced engineers, the London Mastaba comprises 7,506 horizontally stacked barrels on a floating platform. It will be 20 meters (65.5 ft) high x 30 meters (90 ft) wide (at the 60° slanted walls) x 40 meters (130 ft) long. Standard 55 gallon barrels will be specifically fabricated and painted for this sculpture. The sides of the barrels, visible on the top and on the two slanted walls of the sculpture, will be red and white; the ends of the barrels, visible on the two vertical walls, will be different hues of red, blue, and mauve.

Reblogged with thanks to http://contemporary-art-blog.com

Phillip K. Smith III

Phillip K. Smith III, “Open Sky”, 2018, Palazzo Isimbardi, Milan, Italy

Phillip K Smith III’s prominent use of mirrors and light refracts the environments surrounding each installation, but his unspoken request for the viewer to focus their intrigue on the often vast stretches of sea, sand and sky surrounding his work is powerful. While many artists thrive on the enigma of presenting an opportunity for subjective interpretation, the message presented by Smith in his Milan Design Week collaboration with COS, the Scandinavian heritage retail giant, is one of a person who spent a childhood bathing in the arid glow of the Coachella Valley and a lifetime meditating on the landscape as his palette.

“I’m already looking at the potential for this project to maybe be in another exterior site, maybe even to be in an interior site. You’re dealing with a vertical surface which is a piece of architecture – material A – then a horizontal surface above you, which is the sky – which is material B. That’s the case here in Milan, maybe if this piece moves somewhere else those materials A and B begin to shift, and the dynamic quality in which they merge across the surface begins to change.” – Phillip K Smith III

Permafrost’s 100 Series Wooden Racer

Permafrost’s 100 Series Wooden Racer

Permafrost is a Norwegian industrial design studio working in many fields: furniture, computer design, lighting, industrial and interior design, and marketing. The studio was formed by four Norwegian industrial designers: Andreas Murray (b: 1975), Eivind Halseth (b: 1972), Oskar Johansen (b: 1974) and Tore Vinje Brustad (b: 1976). They  all graduated from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design in 1999 and set up Permafrost in 2000.

Sawada Shinichi

Figurative Sculptures by Sawada Shinichi

Shinichi Sawada was born in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. Diagnosed as autistic, he found employment in the hospital bakery of the Ritto Nakayoshi Sagyojo (institute for the mentally disabled, in the city of Kusatsu). In 2001, the professor directing the workshop where Sawada worked with clay, launched the construction of a small potter’s cabin: it was located a few kilometers from the institution and deep in the wilds.

Here Sawada creates his sculptures silently and with unflagging regularity. His works – demons, monsters, masks – are characterized by hundreds spikes of clay that give them an intricate and frightful beauty. He plants these one by one into the either round or cylindrical shapes constituting the central body of each piece. After shaping the bodies, he fires them in a large wood-fired kiln built of earth and ignited only twice a year. This gives them their brownish-red hue in lighter or darker shades, depending on the flames.

These monstrous and magical creatures seem to be the fruit of a personal mythology, maybe inspired by the old Japanese traditions of imaginary beasts, ghosts and spirits. We can find affinities with the masks of Nō Theatre,  manga characters, and African tribal arts.

Jorge Mendez Blake

Jorge Mendez Blake, “The Castle”, 2007, Bricks, Book

“The Castle” is a 2007 project by Mexican artist Jorge Mendez Blake that subtly examines the impact of a single outside force. For the installation, he constructed a 75 x 13 foot brick wall that balances on top of a single copy of Franz Kafka’s “The Castle”. The mortarless wall bulges at the site of the inserted text, creating an arch that extends to the top of the precarious structure.

Although a larger metaphor could be applied to the installation no matter what piece of literature was chosen, Méndez Blake specifically selected “The Castle” to pay tribute to Kafka’s lifestyle and work. The novelist was a deeply introverted figure who wrote privately throughout his life, and was only published posthumously by his friend Max Brod. This minimal, yet poignant presence is reflected in the brick work—Kafka’s novel showcasing how a small idea can have a monumental presence.

Kristen Mayer

Kristen Mayer: Geometric Precision

Prop stylist and designer Kristen Mayer melds quotidian materials into distinctive outlines in her series of geometric flat lays. The multi-media artist, who is based in New Haven, Connecticut, gathers crackers, sticks, spaghetti, herbs, and other common raw materials and arranges them in circles and squares. The finesse comes in her use of negative space, creating implied borders lines that help complete the shape without a full density of “ingredients.”

Gilles Guerin

Gilles Guerin, “The Horses of the Sea”, Marble, 1670, Commisioned by King Louis XIV for the Gardens of Versailles

Executed by the sculptor Gilles Guérin (1611-1678) to a design by Louis XIV’s court painter, Charles Le Brun, the horses were just one part of a larger composition that featured another double horse and triton grouping by the Marsy brothers, “The Horses of Apollo Groomed by Tritons”, and a central sculpture by François Girardon, “Apollo Tended by the Nymphs of Tethys”.

Designed to depict the Greek god resting at the end of his daily procession across the heavens in the chariot of the Sun, all three sculptures were carved from the same white Carrara marble and all were destined for the Grotto of Tethys, a whimsical, underwater-inspired pavilion whose interior was decorated with precious stones, shells, mirrors, mosaics, and masks.

Like the other sculptures that were being installed in Versailles’ grounds during the first phase of its construction, such as Charles le Brun’s Fountain of Apollo, which also features the Greek god with horses attended by tritons, the sculptures were intended to draw parallels between the mythological attributes of the sun god and reign of the self-styled Sun King.

“Louis XIV’s idea of identifying himself with the sun was probably his best decision because it has resonated since that time and even to today,” explains Laurent Salomé, director of National Museum of the Palaces of Versailles and the Trianon.

The sculpture is now on exhibit at the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Calendar: April 11

A Year: Day to Day Men: 11th of April

A Hurried Pace

April 11, 1869 was the birthdate of Adolf Gustav Thorsen, the Norwegian sculptor.

Gustav Thorsen was sent to Oslo as a youth to learn wood carving at a local school. However, the sudden death of his father compelled him to move back to Mandal, his birthplace, to help his family. Thorsen later lived for a time with his grandparents on a farm in Vigeland. He returned to Oslo in 1888, this time determined to be a professional sculptor.

In the late 1880s, Thorsen adopted adopted the new family surname, ’Vigeland’, from the area where he and his grandparents had lived. He came to the attention of sculptor Brynjulf Bergslien, who supported him and gave him practical training. In 1889 Gustav Vigeland exhibited his first work, “Hagar and Ishmael”. 

Gustav Vigeland spent the years 1891 to 1896 in several voyages abroad, which included periods at  Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin and Florence. He frequented Auguste Rodin’s workshop in the French capital and experimented with ancient and Renaissance artworks in Italy. In these years the themes that would later dominate Vigeland’s inspiration, death and the relationship between man and woman, first appeared. He held his first personal exhibitions in Norway in 1894 and 1896, which received notable critical praise. By 1905 Vigeland was considered the most talented Norwegian sculptor and received numerous commissions for statues and busts of renowned compatriots.

In 1906 Vigeland proposed a chalk model for a monumental fountain. Initially, the idea of the Oslo municipality was to put the fountain in Eidsvolis Plass, the square in front of the Parliament of Norway. Vigeland’s work was generally welcomed, but the location created a dispute and the completion of the work was postponed. In the meantime He enlarged the original project plans, adding several sculpture groups and a high granite column in 1919.

Gustav Vigeland moved to his new studio on Nobels gate in the borough of Frogner during 1924. The studio was located in the vicinity of Frogner Park, which he had chosen as the definitive location for his fountain. Over the following twenty years, Vigeland was devoted to the project of an open exhibition of his works, which becam what is now known as Vigeland Sculpture Arrangement (Vigelandsanlegget) in Frogner Park. The Vigeland installation features 212 bronze and granite sculptures all designed by Gustav Vigeland. The sculptures culminate in the famous Monolith with its 121 figures struggling to reach the top of the sculpture.

Tom Robbins: “Flesh is Water. Stones are like Bones. Satisfied. Patient.”

Photographers Unknown, Faces of Man : Flesh and Stone

“Bones are patient. Bones never tire nor do they run away. When you come upon a man who has been dead many years, his bones will still be lying there, in place, content, patiently waiting, but his flesh will have gotten up and left him. Water is like flesh. Water will not stand still. It is always off to somewhere else; restless, talkative, and curious. Even water in a covered jar will disappear in time. Flesh is water. Stones are like bones. Satisfied. Patient. Dependable. Tell me, then, Alobar, in order to achieve immortality, should you emulate water or stone? Should you trust your flesh or your bones?”

–Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

Izumi Sukeyuki

Izumi Sukeyuki, Snake and Frog Kimono, Wood Inlayed with Horn and Shakudo, Meiji Era, Late 19th Century, Japan

Sukeyuki lived in Omi Province, present-day Shiga Prefecture, in the town of Bamba. He was a master carver of butsudan or family Buddhist altars. On a visit to Hida-Takayama he was amazed to see the okimono and netsuke by the carver Sukemizu, and resolved to start carving similar pieces. Famous for his frog netsuke, Sukeyuki also used the Go or art name Gamatei Sukeyuki.

Sukeyuki’s kimono in the form of a hungry snake conversing with a plump frog, is carved from a single piece of wood. The eyesare  inlaid in horn and the snake’s tongue is made of shakudo. It is signed on the reverse with an inlaid seal form wood plaque,

Calendar: April 8

A Year: Day to Day Men: 8th of April

The Thrill of a New Day

The Greek statue Aphrodite of Milos, known as the Venus de Milo, is discovered on April 8, 1820.

The Venus de Milo is an ancient Greek marble statue believed to depict the goddess Aphrodite. It was initially attributed to the sculptor Praxiteles; however, from an inscription on its base, it is now thought to be sculpted by Alexandros of Antioch, a wandering artist who worked on commission. Created between 130-100 BC, it is slightly larger than life and widely known for the mystery of her missing arms. The goddess originally wore metal jewelry — bracelet, earrings, and headband — of which only the fixation holes remain.

The Venus statue is generally asserted as being discovered by Yorgos Kentrotas on April 8, 1820, inside a buried niche within the ancient city ruins of Milos on the island of Milos in the Aegean Sea, which at that time was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The statue was found in two large pieces (the upper torso and the lower draped legs) along with serveral pillars topped with sculpted heads, fragments of the upper left arm and the left hand holding an apple, and an inscribed plinth. Part of an arm and the original plinth was lost following the discovery.

In 1871, during the Paris Commune uprising, many public buildings were burned. The Venus de Milo statue was secreted out of the Louvre Museum in an oak crate and hidden in the basement of Prefecture of Police. Though the Prefecture was burned, the statue survived undamaged.

In the autumn of 1939, the Venus was packed for removal from the Louvre in anticipation of the outbreak of war. Scenery trucks from the theater Comédie-Française transported the Louvre’s masterpieces to safer locations in the French countryside. During World War II, the statue was sheltered safely in the Chateau de Valençay in the province of Berry, along with the two other sculptures, “Winged Victory of Samothrace” and Michelangelo’s “Slaves”.

When the discoverer, the farmer Yorgos Kentrotas, called upon a French naval officer to help him unearth the sculpture, it began a chain of events that eventually involved the Marquis de Rivière who presented the Venus de Milo to Louis XVIII, The king donated the sculpture to the Louvre the following year 1821 where this statue, a traditional example of Hellenistic sculpture, is on permanent display at the Louvre.