Friday, August 17, 2012

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Royal French Ballet 1620s

Click to enlarge image
The Hazardous Perrette and a Cat, Daniel Rabel 1620s Royal French Ballet
Ballet des Fées de la forêt de Saint Germain
Music Recital for grand Ballet.
More illustrations like this at BibliOdyssey

The cat above reminds me a lot of my little pierrots that I painted from my imagination in 2004-2005.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Kusama and Cornell

 Yayoi Kusama with Cornell 1970
(he looks a little like he's choking her, but she looks happy)
Yayoi Kusama Age 10 1939
Blouin Artinfo has more photos of Kusama (that's where I got these).
Link to my recent boingboing essay on the book about Joseph Cornell, Utopia Parkway.
Kusama and her relationship with Cornell is mentioned in the book.
The photo (above) was taken in 1970, he died in 1972.

Monday, August 06, 2012

What am I up to?

Here are some details of a larger oil painting that I am working on.
These are just some quicky ipod glimpses of the unfinished work.
The temporary title is "Fig Leaf Parasol".

Sunday, August 05, 2012

Painting of the day by Ilya Repin

 I like this painting by Ilya Repin called "Dragon-fly". It is a portrait of the artist's daughter, Vera Repina (1884, oil on canvas). More about Repin here. He was born on August 5, 1844, so it's his birthday today. He was a great Russian realist painter.


Friday, August 03, 2012

My essay about Utopia Parkway (the book) for Boing Boing

I wrote an essay about one of my favorite books- Utopia Parkway, The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell by Deborah Solomon (shown above)- for Boing Boing's Enthralling Books series. It is an absolutely wonderful biography of an eccentric man who became a great American artist.
Here's the LINK to my essay.

Here is a link to the works of Joseph Cornell. (artnet)
One thing that touched me about Cornell, which I failed to mention in my essay, was how he cared about and related to children. Shortly before he died in 1972, he had a show at Cooper Union School in NYC. This show was just for children and his works were hung at the child's-eye level. He actually attended the opening and they served cherry coke and brownies (which I am sure he gladly scarfed down). Shown here are a few pictures of the event (from A Joseph Cornell Album - Viking 1974- courtesy Dore Ashton/Denise Hare). You can see more photos at: Stopping Off Place Blog


The Art of Amy Crehore