Twin Towers spray paint art

Here is some weekend fun.

Why must architects prove their worth?

You can currently buy two rival sets of Alfred Hitchcock films on DVD. One includes such masterpieces as Strangers on a Train and I Confess; the other boasts Psycho , The Birds and Vertigo . You might ponder why there are two sets, and what principle of selection is involved - but just look at the logos: one box contains films Hitch made for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, the other films for Universal. Long after his death and his acceptance into the pantheon of the greatest directors who ever lived, Hitchcock is still at the same time a studio property whose films are assets of today's MGM and Universal.

This brings me to the beautiful Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs, designed by Richard Neutra in 1946 and currently up for sale. With its clean low linear form set against desert mountains it actually resembles the modernist house at Mount Rushmore in Hitchcock's North by Northwest. But that's not why I've dragged in the master of suspense. Rather, the way the sale of the Neutra house is being promoted raises the same questions those boxed sets do about art and pragmatism.

Christie's is auctioning the Kaufmann Desert House as a work of art, hoping to redefine what was recently considered a derelict building ripe for demolition into a $25m (£12.4m) aesthetic masterpiece. What's surprising is that anyone should doubt this. The house is an extraordinary achievement from the golden age of American modernism, by a renowned designer. Why does Christie's have to labour the point that it is "art"? Why would anyone mistake it for anything else?

Because it's a house. Architecture is made to be used; it can be art but it isn't always. As a house, the old Kaufmann place has fallen into disuse and doesn't reflect the consumer aspirations of the rich today. Still it is of interest to connoisseurs of design, hope Christie's.

Architects are like film directors, it seems to me, because both have to accept and work within tough commercial realities. An architect's dream house must also be a house to live in. A film director's vision must persuade backers to invest. It's amazing how many trials and tribulations film-makers must endure even when everyone recognises them as serious artists; it doesn't matter how much critics revere you, you still have to bring in your latest project on budget and pitch the next idea. Hitchcock recognised this and even relished it; where other directors let Hollywood destroy them he gleefully walked the line between making art and producing product.

All of this raises the question of what makes art, which is defined as such by art galleries and the art world, so much more privileged? Visual artists are protected by galleries and curators in a way no film director or architect can ever expect. To put it another way, an architect or a film director is less of an artist in the world's eyes than someone whose job description says "artist".

(via The Guardian.)

The accidental discovery of Prussian Blue

Any artist who enjoys using Prussian blue will find it hard to imagine that such a beautiful blue was actually the result of an experiment gone wrong. The discoverer of Prussian blue, the colormaker Diesbach, was in fact not trying to make a blue, but a red. The creation of Prussian blue, the first modern, synthetic color was completely accidental.

Diesbach, working in Berlin, was attempting to create cochineal red lake in his laboratory. ("Lake" was once a label for any dye-based pigment; these days it's used with relation to red only. "Cochineal" was originally obtained by crushing the bodies of cochineal insects.) The ingredients he needed were iron sulphate and potash. In a move that'll bring a smile to any artist's who's ever tried to save money by buying cheap materials, he obtained some contaminated potash from the alchemist in whose laboratory he was working, Johann Konrad Dippel. The potash had been contaminated with animal oil and was due to be thrown out.

When Diesbach mixed the contaminated potash with the iron sulphate, instead of the strong red he was expecting, he got one that was very pale. He then attempted to concentrate it, but instead of a darker red he was expecting, he first got a purple, then a deep blue. He'd accidentally created the first synthetic blue pigment, Prussian blue.

Traditional Blues
It's hard to imagine now, given the range of stable, lightfast colors we can buy, that in the early eighteenth century artists didn't have an affordable or stable blue to use. Ultramarine, which is extracted from the stone lapis lazuli, was more expensive than vermilion and even gold. (In the Middle Ages, there was only one known source of lapis lazuli, which means simply 'blue stone'. This was Badakshan, in what is now Afghanistan. Other deposits have subsequently been found in Chile and Siberia). Indigo had a tendency to turn black, was not lightfast, and had a greenish tinge. Azurite turned green when mixed with water so couldn't be used for frescoes. Smalt was difficult to work with and had a tendency to fade. And not enough was yet known about the chemical properties of copper to consistently create a blue instead of a green (it's now know that the result depends on the temperature it was made at).

The Chemistry Behind the Creation of Prussian Blue
Neither Diesbach nor Dippel were able to explain what had happened, but these days we know that the alkali (the potash) reacted with the animal oil (prepared from blood), to create potassium ferrocyanide. Mixing this with the iron sulphate, created the chemical compound iron ferrocyanide, or Prussian blue.

The Popularity of Prussian Blue
Diesbach made his accidental discovery some time between 1704 and 1705. In 1710 it was described as being "equal to or excelling ultramarine". Being about a tenth of the price of ultramarine, it's not wonder that by 1750 it was being widely used across Europe. By 1878 Winsor and Newton were selling Prussian blue and other paints based on it such as Antwerp blue (Prussian blue mixed with white). Famous artists who have used it include Gainsborough, Constable, Monet, Van Gogh, and Picasso (in his 'Blue Period').

The Characteristics of Prussian Blue
Prussian blue is a translucent (semi-transparent) color, but has a high tinting strength (a little has a marked effect when mixed with another color). Originally Prussian blue had a tendency to fade or turn grayish green, particularly when mixed with white, but with modern manufacturing techniques this is no longer an issue.

(via About.com)

45 second painting

The classic colors of art nouveau

Art Nouveau was an international art movement during the late 1800’s that focused on decorative arts such as glass work, interior design and jewelery, along with other departures from tradition in design, painting and sculpture. The movement was characterized by an elaborate ornate style of flowing curvilinear forms that frequently depicted leaves and flowers.

Key artist in the movement included: Gustav Klimt, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Otto Wagner, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Stanisław Wyspiański.

Although Art Nouveau took on distinctly localized tendencies as its geographic spread increased some general characteristics are indicative of the form. A description published in Pan magazine of Hermann Obrist’s wall-hanging Cyclamen (1894) described it as “sudden violent curves generated by the crack of a whip”, and this description became well-known during the early spread of Art Nouveau. Subsequently, not only did the work itself become better-known as The Whiplash, but the term “whiplash” is frequently applied to the characteristic curves employed by Art Nouveau artists. Such decorative “whiplash” motifs, formed by dynamic, undulating, and flowing lines in a syncopated rhythm, are found throughout the architecture, painting, sculpture and other forms of Art Nouveau design.

(via Colorlovers.com)

Artist creates sticky note Mona Lisa

An Iowa artist reproduced Leonardo Da Vinci's world-renowned painting, Mona Lisa, out of sticky notes for a contest submission.

Blind painter

University of North Texas (UNT) student John Bramblitt paints beautiful works of art in vivid colors, despite the fact that he's been blind for years.
We at Snowcem Paints salute the indomitable spirit of Mr John Bramblitt.

The paintings of Claude Monet

Claude Monet

view presentation (tags: paintings romanticism arte impresionismo)

Sculptures from automobile scrap

How the Pavement Picasso does it

A time lapse video of Julian Beever creating the Aveeno Fountain of Youth chalk drawing in Union Square, NYC.

Muto, a wall-painted animation

The new short film by Blu: an ambiguous animation painted on public walls.
Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden. Simply amazing!

Women in art

500 years of female portraits in Western art.

Color chart at the MOMA

I went to the new show “Color Chart” at MoMA thinking I’d have a new set of color inspirations to suggest for interiors based on the work of these artists. What I came away with instead were several contradictory thoughts on the usage and history of color in paint...

For most of the history of painting, artists and their assistants mixed their own paints. Palettes were simple, consisting of red and yellow ochre, earth tones, black and white, with maybe a personal favorite thrown in. If a patron was willing to fund it, add vermilion and ultramarine, which incidentally is why Christ always had red robes and the Virgin bright blue. Synthetic pigments gave the Impressionists bright new colors to play with but paint was still something of a cottage industry.

By the time 1950 rolled around, paint was mass-produced and color stocks were standardized, plus the introduction of acrylic paint to the market all meant that artists were left with an unprecedented array of color options to choose from. There are two major themes on display in this exhibition—artists working with industrial paint products, and artists using a paint store color index as a point of reference.

The show is scintillating, with walls everywhere covered in checkerboards of contrasting color. It’s easy to understand why artists were drawn to these new standardized indices—to hold one of these newly minted color charts in your hand with its many new options, one would want to leap into the studio and start experimenting. Appropriately, much of the work feels like pages from a fan deck writ big.

An early Marcel Duchamp piece entitled “Tu M’” contains lozenge shapes representing the first color chips available. Paintings by Gerhard Richter and Jim Dine look literally like large color samples. It’s easy to imagine artist like Ellsworth Kelley cutting up his own color charts to make the small collages that eventually become larger work. Jennifer Bartlett and Damien Hirst offer a contemporary spin on this idea.

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DNA 11 is a service that creates an abstract and original piece of artwork from a simple sample of your DNA. Each piece of DNA’s art is unique, as it illustrates your very own DNA make up. Using science and art cleverly combined, DNA11 collect a saliva sample from each client which is then delivered to their certified lab. Here your DNA is extracted, creating a unique fingerprint. After that you’ll just have to choose the size of canvas and the colour combination you wish to use, and create your own DNA Portrait. And remember, if you’ll become famous be sure that a piece of art work with your DNA will worth millions. They do the same with fingerprints.

Why is Mona Lisa the greatest portarit of all time?

The Mona Lisa is widely considered the greatest portrait of all time. It appears in countless advertisements, has inspired poetry, sculpture, forgeries, and theft. But seriously, why? The painting is small, only 30 x 21 inches, the color is somber, the background seems desolate and eerie, and the subject isn't anyone historically significant. So, what is all the brouhaha about? Is it really all about her mystifying gaze and a quirky smile? Well, let's take a closer look.

Dutch artist paints 1000 meters of road blue

The artist Henk Hofstra painted 1,000 meters of road blue to create an urban river with about 4000 liters of paint. Hofstra wants the work, to show up on Google Earth.

Modern notions of art and color

The development of art is linked to our interest in vision. Modern art emerged in France by artists such as Paul Gauguin(1848-1903), Paul Signac (1863-1935), Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) in the second half of the 19th century. During the same period, scientists began to explore how we see. The new understanding of vision influenced the development of art and our understanding of it.

With the artistic and scientific revolutions of the 19th century, the tradition of sublime history painting, inspired by political, spiritual or mythological subjects, lost its dominant position. Likewise the unsparing vision of modern portraiture shows an interest in ‘truth’ rather than formal ‘high art’ values, or presenting an ‘image of power’. Artists now engaged with the depiction of modern life with its sometimes less sublime subject matters, which were increasingly depicted in non-naturalistic colors and forms. By the early 20th century, artists such as Henri Matisse (1839-1954) claimed that color and form could only achieve their full potential if they become independent from the objects they depicted. Importantly, modern artists emphasized the view of each individual artist, and hence, vision.

(Webexhibits)

The sheep that paints

The first sign that sheep have innate artistic capability was witnessed by well-known artist Ann Gadd in a work she has entitled 'The Artist in Ewe' on behalf of the artist, Ewereka. Ewereka has already painted more than 1000 paintings. "

The work is rumanantistic, yet shows a subtle movement away from Dadaism to Baabaaism," comments Gadd. Her husband, Anthony constructed a special brush which allowed Ewereka to paint

Mona Lisa descending a staircase

Animation of several pieces of 20th century art morphing into each other. Quite beautiful.

Woman arrested for kissing painting

A woman has been arrested on suspicion of kissing a painting by American artist Cy Twombly and smudging the bone-white canvas with her lipstick, French judicial officials said Saturday.

Police said they arrested the woman after she kissed the work on Thursday. She is to be tried in a court in the southern city of Avignon on Aug. 16 for "damage to a work of art," judicial officials said.

The painting, which is worth an estimated $2 million, was on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon. It is part of an exhibition slated to run at the museum through Sept. 30. Officials did not provide further details on the painting.