Glimpse of New Mark Ryden Painting

Paul Kasmin Gallery is showing a Mark Ryden painting at Art Basel Miami Beach . His big-eyed girl with snow-white hair is wearing a party frock made of meat this year. She looks to be dressed for a debutante ball in the old south. He is using a subdued color palette which brings to mind old faded prints found in an antique shop.

Surreal Saints of Breasts and Eyes

Agatha of Sicily

Giovanni Cariani (circa 1485 - 1547)
National Gallery of Scotland

Breasts on a plate

Saint Lucy

Francisco de Zurbarán Spanish, 1598 - 1664,

National Gallery of Art

Eyes on a plate

detail from 'Saint Lucy', Francesco del Cossa, 1473,

oil on panel, National Gallery of Art

Eyes depicted as flowers.

Photo by Manuel Álvarez Bravo

Nude woman holding a plate of eyes.
LINK

Pink Lady of the Canyon

How the heck did that get there? The story goes: "One Saturday morning, on October 29, 1966, a massive 60-foot-tall painting of a nude pink lady holding flowers suddenly appeared as you headed into the tunnel on Malibu Canyon Road. " Read full story by marc at:

Wooster Collective

The Art of Amy Crehore

Fake Snow Portraits from the Past

My flickr friend, Steve Chasmar, posted these photos in his

Notable Portraiture Set

and it got me thinking- could I find anymore cabinet cards portraits from the late 1800's of winter tableaux with fake snow? Sure enough

The American Photography Museum

has a page of them. I think these are quite dreamlike and fascinating! A lot of them were staged and shot in the summer months. Steve's photo shown here (bottom) looks to be touched up with white paint to get a snowy effect.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Surreal Bubble Woman #2

Sally Rand 1934
Alice Daquet (KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images)

A couple years ago, I blogged about an American surreal bubble woman, Sally Rand. Here we have a modern French version, Alice Daquet (a.k.a. Sir Alice) who performed on November 25, 2009 at the opening ceremony of 'No Man's Land'- an art's festival located at the former office building of the French embassy in Tokyo. Hey, it looks like Sir Alice gets around. Here's a youTube of her that was made in Taiwan.

Photo/story via Jezebel.com.

Kay Nielsen, Beautiful and Sad

Little Mermaid Sketch
Little Mermaid Sketch

Rapunzel illustration

In Powder and Crinolin illustration

Kay Nielsen (1886-1957) was an amazingly talented Danish illustrator in the first part of the 20th century. The book shown above was his first commission -completed in 1913. The next year, he did artwork for East of The Sun West of The Moon, old tales from the North. In 1924-25 he illustrated Hans Andersen's fairy tales and stories by the Brothers Grimm. In the years between these books, he designed stage scenery for Copenhagen theater. In 1930, another illustrated book called Red Magic was published.

Kay Nielsen travelled to California to work on a stage production of Everyman at the Hollywood Bowl in 1936. He decided to stay in California and he applied for a job in the Walt Disney animation department. He worked on designs for Fantasia and they were lucky to have him. He also did designs for future projects, The Little Mermaid (above) and a sequel to Fantasia, but, unfortunately, he was laid off in 1940. He was 54.

Kay Nielsen died in poverty in 1957, at age 71, in a house donated to him by friends. He executed four murals in Los Angeles schools and churches during the last couple of decades of his life. This is kind of a sad ending for someone who was truly one of the great, important artists of fairy tale picture books and who's designs for animations were equally remarkable and innovative. In 1975, a book was published that included his work and people began to appreciate him again. In 1977, some of his friends came forward with 42 paintings- never before seen- held in trust, for a book called, A Thousand and One Nights.

The Scepter : see more of Kay Nielsen's beautiful pastel/watercolor sketches for The Little Mermaid 1941

Golden Age Comic Book Stories Blog : lots of illustrations in color and B&W from Kay Nielsen's picture books.

Thanks, finsbry at flickr (set of KN images)

The Art of Amy Crehore

"The Believer" Art Issue 2009

I bought a copy of "The Believer" magazine's 2009 art issue the other day. First of all, the cover has very funny Charles Burns version of an Edward Hopper painting. Inside, there is a huge Jerry Moriarty poster and an interview (by Chris Ware) of the eccentric artist, illustrated by examples of his paintings. I always liked Moriarty's work, "Jack Survives", back in the days of RAW Magazine. (RAW was a large-format comics anthology edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly from 1980 to 1991.) Buenaventura Press recently published The Complete Jack Survives as a hardcover book.

In this same issue of "The Believer", there is another cool interview with one of my favorite comic artists, Aline Kominsky-Crumb (creator of Love That Bunch, The Complete Dirty Laundry Comics and editor of Weirdo). This is a great ART issue with much, much more, but

if I told you everything my blog post would be way too long and gushing, so here's a link to see for yourself:

THE BELIEVER

The Art of Amy Crehore