Rainy day in Paris

I found it at StumbleUpon and if you click here where the image is in size where we can see details you'll feel the same impression that you're part of the scene.
The name of the author is missing and the specifications of the technique. (click, it's just one click)

Gazelles: Prehistoric, Islamic and photograph

I think it is amazing that the three images are so apart in time and culture but still we can feel the gazelle's universe.





Top Left: Detail of the Chauvet cave paintings.

Top Right: Photography of gazelles.

Left: Two Gazelles Running / From Ibn Bakhtishu’s “Uses of Animals”, Persia, Maragha, 1297-1300, MS M.500, fol. 36v. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1912. Photography: Graham S. Haber / Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum.

Google doodle celebrating 150th Gustav Klimt

This is today's Google doodle remembering the 150th anniversary of Gustav Klimt.

The Google's word for the search is behind 1908's "The Kiss" the most famous of Klimt's piece creating a very beautiful effect.

The floor with tiny flowers was enlarged to the left and the background was done in the gilded style Klimt used in this period of his career.

Happy birthday Gustav Klimt!

Alireza Darvish's Illustration over Books

I found Alireza Darvish's Book inspired paintings and it was difficult to decide to pick one among so many amazing pieces. There are 40 paintings now from a collection he started in 2000.

The Iranian artist and composer is also a graphic designer emigrated to Germany and later to Spain where he is a famous illustrator for some newspapers.

This is the painting I did chose to introduce Alireza for those who follow this blog. You can see them at this site.

Erik van Elven's children at the beach

I just came across with this painting, "Double Problem", by Erik van Elven and felt like sharing.

He is starting to work on largest paintings for his next exhibition.

This is quite inspiring to start the week.

Sculpture: Woman and girl in merry-go-round delight

I found this sculpture here without the title and the name of the artist.

I remember the feeling when I was a child when an adult did it with me. It felt so good!

21th Century Most Dangerous People: those who dare to mix

Mixing: The crime of the century.

"In 1845, Ralph Waldo Emerson, alluding to the development of European civilization out of the medieval Dark Ages, wrote in his private journal of America as the Utopian product of a culturally and racially mixed "smelting pot", but only in 1912 were his remarks first published. In his writing, Emerson explicitly welcomed the racial intermixing of whites and non-whites, a highly controversial view during his lifetime."

"In The Melting Pot (1905), Zangwill combined a romantic denouement with a utopian celebration of complete cultural intermixing. The play was an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, set in New York City.

2012: Xenophobia and hate in the utmost degree. What a setback! We are going backwards.

MIX IT UP

Enlightened cow

 I like the lights of the colored lines.

I found this image without the author and how it was done.

The dance of the cows in Spring by Erik van Elven

This is one of the great works of Erik van Elven. I was taking a look at his blog and felt like sharing some of his sketches. "Jump" is the first one:

"In Dutch, the translation for "Jump" is "Spring", the same as the season. For me, spring has not begun until the cows are back in the meadows, after they've stayed indoors all winter long.

The sheer joy, like little kids in a playground, of these massive animals is very inspirational and you can't help but smile when you witness the cows do their dance..."

Erik van Elven

I remember the first time I, a city-person, saw a cow. I stared into her eyes and... no words to describe that feeling.

Juan Gris on the necessity of constant reflexion

Jose Victoriano Gonzalez-Perez better known as Juan Gris (March 23, 1887 - May 11, 1927) was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life.



His works are closely connected to the emergence of an innovative artistic genre-Cubism.

Dufy's Tribute to Mozart and Debussy

Right: Hommage à Debussy, 1952.

Left: Hommage à Mozart, 1952,



Trying to capture the essence of music in plastic art was done by some artists and Dufy worked many times on this theme.



The innovation in these two pieces is the way the sound of the piano is represented through the leaves and flowers feeling the air of the room with the sound of the piano.

Oben Abright's glass people

Oben Albright was exposed to art very soon and used to paint, draw and sculpt with clay at his parent's studio.

In 2004 he received his BFA in glass from California College of Arts and Crafts. His work has been shown with Habatat Gallery Chicago, now Echt Gallery, and maintains a studio in Oakland, Ca.

This is what he says about his work:



“Human emotion is a subject of infinite artistic value. My work portrays the faces and experiences of people around me. As a sculptor working in clay I wanted to show more internal imagery behind the still face of a figure. This desire to reveal the interior has led me to pursue the transparency of glass. A glass figure conveys fragility and communicates through light better then one in any other medium.”

Oben Abright



He uses other materials but blowing glass is at the core of most of his work. I would love the technique used to mold the glass.



In 2008, Albright went to Burma and visited the war zone. He had an accident:



Antonio Graceffo wrote about it:



"On a recent fact finding mission into the war zone in Burma, San Francisco glass sculptor, Oben Abright, became the latest casualty of the world’s longest running conflict. Oben’s hand was crushed in a motorcycle accident near a military checkpoint. It took seven hours to evacuate Oben from the conflict zone to a hospital in the city, where he lay on an operating table for another three and half hours before surgeons could finally begin a procedure to install six metal pins, connecting his shattered bones. Two weeks after the accident, Oben flew back to the United States for outpatient care. Over the next two months, he is expected to make a full recovery.



Having read about the conflict in Burma and the genocide being perpetrated on the Shan and other minority peoples, Oben had the idea of using his art to raise awareness of one of the world’s least reported wars. "



“Sculpture is the most powerful medium of art.” Explained Oben. “Sculpture occupies a three dimensional space.” He went on to say that when people buy a sculpture for thousands of dollars, they put it in a prominent position in their house. They like to know the story behind the sculpture. And they like to tell their friends about it.



People in the west have become immune to the countless sad images on TV of exotic people suffering in some remote corner of the world where we have never been, and where we will never go. How can television and media reporting create awareness and empathy when they have simply become so much background noise?



Unlike print media, sculpture cannot be ignored.



The accident occurred on Oben’s second trip into the war zone. During his first visit at the Shan State rebel Army (SSA) headquarters, Oben lived in a community of several thousand displaced Shan people, and heard their stories first hand.



After photographing orphans, widows, amputees, soldiers, and civilians inside of the conflict zone, Oben Abright plans to feature the Shan people of Burma in an upcoming sculpture series.



Below is the full story of the incident. When the story originally appeared, Oben’s name had to be changed. He was originally called “Unten.” Now that he is safely out of the conflict zone, the story can be released with his real name. keep reading.

Sculptures in paper: Jeff Nishinaka and Paperfetish

Leftt: Writer by Jeff Nishinaka

Right: Kaneda by paperfetish



I just found these two artists that work with paper.

Enchantment is the word that most describe my feeling when I look at these pieces.

Visit the site of the artists to see what they have to say.

I'll stay here watching these two.

Isn't it amazing the way they do the shadows? The lights from the right one...

Matisse's The young sailor and the Fauves

Matisse painted the 18 years-old  fisherman Germain Augustin Barthélémy twice in 1906.

The left one is the second version:  the contours have been sharpened, the forms are more defined, and the colors have been reduced to large, mostly flat areas of bright green, blue, and pink.

The three dimension at this painting is still suggested.

Matisse had already started painting in the Fauve in 1905:



"Fauve painting is not everything, but it is the foundation of everything."

Henri Matisse

Picasso's Young girl sleeping

Jeune fille endormie "Young girl sleeping" was painted in 1935.

The back and white drawing he did in 1952 is like a revisit to this painting.

"Everybody cheats" Caravaggio

Top-right: The Cardsharps, 1597,

Top-left:  The Fortune Teller, 1594

Bottom-right: The Cardsharps, detail.

Bottom-left: The Fortune Teller, detail











Caravaggio portrayed men of the streets and their activities and this is one of

At The Cardsharps the young men is being cheated by the other player who has a card at his back and an accomplice that is watching the young's man cards (detail).



The Fortune Teller is reading the hand while steals the ring of her client. (detail)

The Book of Thel by William Blake

At the Harvard University Library there is an online copy of The Book of Thel by William Blake.

Everything was done by Blake who was a poet, an illustrator and was responsible for the publication.



Richard Dover explains The Book of Thel:



"Dated 1789, but probably engraved between 1788 and 1791, The Book of Thel is an intriguing allegorical counterpart to the Songs of Innocence.



Here Thel, a mythological figure associated with the daugher of Venus (Desire), is a young virginal figure, intrigued by the world of sex and experience, but she is frightened by the prospect.



In the course of the 'Book' she confronts various forms of created life - the Lilly, the Cloud, the Worm, the Clod of Clay - and asks them about the mysteries of mortal life: what is it like to be mortal, to live and to experience, but also to have to face the prospect of disillusionment, depair and death.



At the end of the 'Book' Thel almost summons the courage to enter the world of the Real, but at the last minute her nerve gives way, and she runs shrieking back to the sanctuary of immortality. In allegorical terms The Book of Thel presents the State of Innocence, confronted by the world of Experience.



Thel is, in one sense, a virginal goddess, pure and untouched by material reality, about to embark on the passage from childhood to adult maturity. Yet she is also, in metaphorical and archetypal form, a symbol of a state of mind or, better still, "State of Soul", a platonic essence intrigued by, but apprehensive of the realities of experience.



Through mythological personification Blake is able to express, in symbolic terms, aspects of innocence and experience which are difficult to express in other terms. Thel's final failure of nerve is, the poem suggests, to be pitied rather than applauded: 'Innocence' may well be an idyllic state but, "Without Contraries there is no Progression".



The Book of Thel can, therefore, be read on a number of levels, from being a literal exploration of various forms of innocence and hesitance (the child's reluctance to grow up), to more abstract and metaphorical levels, an allegorical exploration of the relationship between Thought and Action, or between the Immortality of the Idea or Image, and the mortality of lived experience."

Akirakirai's emotions and universe

I have published some works "exposed" at DeviantArt and this time I was browsing and found Akirakirai's profile. 

Having others sources to find those who are creative but are not on the market is one of the benefits of internet that also grant us with the possibility of finding a piece of a master that is not on books, the only source we had.

I did chose these two works by Akirakirai, whose mangas have a style of her own created in a universe quite unique, but only browsing her profile we can fully capture her art.

Left: A Fallen Angel

Right: Creation 

Art: by  akirakirai

©2011-2012 =akirakirai

Saint Augustine by Caravaggio discovered in a private collection

Hidden on a private collection where it was considered as an anonymous this Saint Augustine painted by Caravaggio was discovered on April, 2011:

"A leading scholar, Sebastian Schütze, professor of art history at the University of Vienna and one of the book's co-authors, called the work a significant discovery.

He said: "It has never been published. What looked like an anonymous 17th-century painting revealed its artistic qualities after restoration."

The painting fits in to Caravaggio's oeuvre around 1600, when his style was sculptural and monumental, with powerful movement and emotional expression." (read whole article by The Guardian)"

This is a great discovery and I cannot help thinking about some masterpieces that are in private collections when they should be considered human heritage.

Holodomor: the Ukrainian genocide denied

It was when finding the site of the artist Natasha Sazonova that I became aware of the Ukrainian genocide 1932-1933. If you don't want to know about another genocide that is denied visit her site to see how great her art is and the thoughts she writes but you'll find it in one page. The right picture is one of her paintings.

Holodomor= "death by hunger" but what happened was not lack of food. It was another of those artificial famines that the most rich countries impose to their "colonies" when they want a ethnic cleansing of just need to kill civilians that are on their way.

Arthur Koestler, the famous British novelist, journalist, and critic spent about three months in the Ukrainian, city of Kharkiv, during the Famine.
He wrote about his experiences in "The God That Failed", a 1949 book which collects together six essays with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-Communists, who were writers and journalists.

"I saw ravages of the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine - hordes of families in rags begging at the railway stations, the women lifting up to the compartment windows their starving brats, which, with drumstick limbs, big cadaverous heads and puffed bellies, looked like embryos out of alcohol bottles."

Arthur Koestler, The God That Failed p. 68

There are sites covering the what have really happened and trying to help awareness about the genocide. I copied the following from this page:

"Ukrainians are dying at the rate of 25,000 a day, more than half were children. In the end, up to 10 million starve to death. Stalin denies to the world that there is any famine in Ukraine, and prevents international aid from entering the country."

Corpses of Famine Victims on the streets. 

Uncovering the Truth:

“Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda. There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.”
(as reported by the New York Times correspondent and Pulitzer-prize winner Walter Duranty)

Denial of the famine by Soviet authorities was echoed at the time of the famine by some prominent Western journalists, like Walter Duranty. It was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of a famine and thus to refuse any outside assistance. Anyone claiming that there was in fact a famine was accused of spreading anti-Soviet propaganda. Inside the Soviet Union, a person could be arrested for even using the word ‘famine’ or ‘hunger’ or ‘starvation’ in a sentence.

Outside the Soviet Union, governments of the West adopted a passive attitude toward the famine, although most of them had become aware of the true suffering in Ukraine through confidential diplomatic channels.
In November 1933, the United States, under its new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, even chose to formally recognized Stalin’s Communist government and also negotiated a sweeping new trade agreement. The following year, the pattern of denial in the West culminated with the admission of the Soviet Union into the League of Nations. Stalin’s Five Year Plan for the modernization of the Soviet Union depended largely on the purchase of massive amounts of manufactured goods and technology from Western nations. Those nations were unwilling to disrupt lucrative trade agreements with the Soviet Union in order to pursue the matter of the famine.

It was kept out of official history until 1991, when the country of 47 million finally won its independence.
Today it is recognized as genocide by less than two dozen countries out of 196. The famine is now the focus of books, exhibitions and documentaries marking the 75th anniversary of the tragedy.

On November 28th 2006, the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament of Ukraine) had passed a Law defining the Holodomor as a deliberate Act of Genocide. Ukraine’s government is asking the United Nations to recognize the disaster as an act of genocide, worsening already frosty relations with Russia, which says the famine resulted from drought*. Russian nationalists vandalized an exhibit at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow in November. While the Russian government didn’t condone the attack, it called Ukraine’s depiction of the famine a “one-sided falsification of history.’’

In recent years Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko had ordered the release of old KGB records on the Famine.
With this information it has become very apparent that this Famine was a deliberate act of Genocide, a method to ethnically cleanse Ukrainians from the territories of Ukraine and parts of Russia. At first only several thousand documents were released. Recently another batch of 25,000 documents is being declassified.
As more documents are released this event in Ukrainian history has taken on a very ominous tone.
On November 28th 2006, the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament of Ukraine) had passed a decree defining the Holodomor as a deliberate Act of Genocide(emphasis added).