Lucian Freud Dead

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping. By Lucian Freud: Yours for £17.2 million

The Artist Lucain Freud has died aged 88. Freud, is famed for his intense realist portrayal of people, particularly nudes. He will be remembered as one of the greatest portrait painters of the twentieth century. He had a strongly idiosyncratic style of painting and he tenaciously adhered to his personal artistic vision, as artistic trends came and went.

Freud was a productive, if methodical artist, working long, hard hours in the studio, even as he approached his late eighties. His work has often been described as disturbing. A portrait of Queen Elizabeth II the reigning English Monarch was described by Robin Simon of the British Art Journal as: Making her look like one of the Royal Corgis who has suffered a stroke.

The grandson of Sigmund Freud the pioneer of modern Psychoanalysis. Freud was born in Berlin Germany in 1922 and moved with his parents to London England in 1933 to escape the Nazis. He became a naturalized british citizen six years later. 

Freud lived and worked in London’s exclusive Holland Park, where he was pals with and painted such luminaries as model Kate Moss. As the grand old man of English art, Freud’s work is highly collectible. A recent painting of an overweight woman on a couch sold for £17.2 million. Freud’s artistic legacy is assured. Funeral arrangements have not been released at the time of writing

Warholian Soup for Los Angeles

Soup tonight?

Warhol is back in town. Marking the 49th anniversary of their controversial public debut in LA  Warhol’s suite of 32 Canvases, depicting Campbell’s soup, are now showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Controversial as ever, the arrival of Warhol’s pop art masterworks has led an over wrought LA Times to suggest that Warhol got the idea of painting soup from William De Kooning. This view originates in De Kooning’s comments in Sketchbook No.1 Three Americans a 1960 movie by Oscar winning filmmaker Robert Snyder. Apparently soup was a common artistic metaphor of the time, used by De Kooning to describe the artistic process. “Everything is already like art—like a big bowl of soup you just stick your hand in and you find something…” Interesting, if nebulous evidence, suggesting that De Kooning was somehow responsible for Warhol’s deification of product as Art.

So what is the true answer? The argument over whether Pop art is a “Joyful celebration of popular culture or a sharp critique of it.” has, as the LA times quite rightly points out, been at the center of the Warholian debate for over fifty years. However the suggestion that Pop Art is: a pointed appraisal of the art establishment’s entrenched status quo and a critique of high cultures supercilious conceits, is as fatuous as Warhol’s suggestion that he painted soup cans because he: “ate it for lunch every day for twenty years.”

Warhol was an obsessive voyeur, a graphic designer and  a supreme scenester  with a overproof sense of irony. As a designer he loved product and yet paradoxically loathed it. As an artist and astute observer of the modern age, he mirrored culture and the reflected image wasn’t always pretty, as those who have seen his films will attest. The most delicious irony is of course, that soup, like art, is open to interpretation and you can either love it or loathe it. Creative Juicings like L.A. loves Warhol. You want soup with that?

http://www.moca.org/

Tom Wolfe: Rockwell is the new Picasso

Tom Wolfe: Norman Rockwell will soon be recognized
as the Picasso of the second half of the Twentieth century.

Tom Wolfe is perhaps America’s greatest living writer. He is certainly an astute social observer, so it is unsurprising that the great man thinks “illustrators will be considered the great American artists of the second half of the Twentieth century.” An opinion that Juicings has voiced for some years and which is now being borne out in the high prices being paid for collectable illustrators such as Norman Rockwell and Gil Elvegren.

Wolfe, perhaps better know for books such as The Right Stuff, Bonfire of the Vanities and Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, certainly knows how to put pen to paper, but it will be a surprise for many Juicelings to learn that he is also a talented illustrator himself.

The National Museum of illustration in Newport R.I, is currently paying homage to Wolfe,  with an exhibition of 37 of his pen & ink illustrations.

The exhibition contains the illustrations from his book, In our time,which were originally reproduced in Harpers magazine. The exhibition runs through labor day. The great satirists unique insights into the world of modern art can be found in his excellent book, Painted Bird. Wolfe’s latest novel, Back to Blood is due next year.

Sappho at the Beach

Sappho on the beach by Tony Bulmer

Lyric poet Sappho was born on the Greek island of Lesbos around 630 BC. Subsequently exiled to Sicily for her beliefs, the true nature of Sappho’s life and work has been the subject of much conjecture, as most of her work has been destroyed.

In 1877 Charles August Mengin painted Sappho as a romantic outsider. He pictured her on the beach looking wistfully homeward, with her lyre, the famed symbol of lyric poets. It is from this point that Sappho became a popular symbol of the romantic outsider. The sexuality of Sappho, from which we get the terms lesbian and sapphic, have also been the subject of much discussion.

Sappho at the Beach was inspired by the mournful Mengin and Santa Monica Beach in Los Angeles.

Sappho on the Beach by Tony Bulmer, 20"x16" Acrylic on canvas

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/sappho.html 

Dangerous Curves

This painting  concerns Beverly Hills. If you have ever driven Sunset Boulevard to Beverly Hills, especially at night, you will know that the road is a racetrack where every supercharged drunk in town tempts fate on the winding turns. Hence the dangerous curves, or Rotondité Dangereux, as our friends on the riviera, with a penchant for double entendre, might say.

The young lady is inspired by Grace Kelly, film star and Princess. A woman who was the epitome of the high living glamor that runs through Beverly Hills to this day.

Dangerous curves, (Rotondité Dangereux) by Tony Bulmer, Acrylic on Canvas 24"X30" Private Collection, Beverly Hills, California.

PICASSO STOLEN

Pablo Picasso's Tete de Femme was stolen
from the Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco 

A thief has stolen a $200,000 Pablo Picasso from the Weinstein Gallery on Geary Street in San Francisco.

The pencil drawing, titled Tête de Femme - Head of a Woman was stolen in the middle of the day and the thief A well-dressed man wearing dark glasses escaped in a waiting taxi.

Police are  appealing to the public for help in catching the crook. Police spokesman Albie Esparza told the San Francisco Chronicle: 'We're hoping someone in the public might recognize this piece, if they see someone walking around with it or trying to sell it.' He described the subject as a 30-to-35-year-old male who is about six feet tall, wearing 'a dark jacket, white shirt, dark pants and loafers without socks'.

Gallery President Rowland Weinstein said the stolen piece was part of a collection that Picasso had given to his driver but the gallery has been showing it since May. Though the piece was insured, Mr Weinstein said he is more worried about preserving it: 'My greatest fear is that, with all this attention on it, the person will realize it's unsellable and will dispose of it in a less-than-proper manner.' The drawing is only about the size of a standard piece of paper so was easy for the thief to steal.’

Picasso did many works titled Tête de Femme. Sharon Flescher, an art historian who heads the International Foundation for Art Research, a non-profit that deals with issues of art authenticity said about the theft: 'Picasso is one of the artists whose works are most stolen and most faked. That's because of the name recognition of Picasso - everyone has heard of Picasso.' She also said it will not be easy to sell, due to the publicity surrounding the theft.

In a Post script to this story Mark Lugo 31 from New Jersey  is being held on grand theft burglary and drug charges. He denies the charges. The artwork has been found stripped from its frame but otherwise undamaged.