Welcome!!

School starts August 11th for all students and I am so looking forward to seeing you!

I like to post interesting art-related things on our blog, like art headlines, fascinating things I've found or heard about or just what artsy stuff I'm thinking about.

Here is an article I just read about an architect who recreates famous buildings in Legos! Check it out and let me know what you think...Have you ever built anything large scale in legos before?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072302244_2.html

Be sure you check out the photos too! http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/07/23/GA2010072302146.html

FLASH! 11 Warhol Portraits STOLEN!

Warhol Paintings Stolen in Los Angeles

Excerpts from the New York Times article By ANAHAD O’CONNOR
Published: September 11, 2009

A multimillion-dollar collection of artwork by Andy Warhol was stolen from the home of a wealthy art collector in West Los Angeles last week, Los Angeles police said Friday.

The valuable collection included 10 silk-screen paintings of famous sports figures. According to investigators, the artwork was on display in the dining room of Richard Weisman, a businessman and art connoisseur whose well-known collection was featured in a book he published in 2003, “Picasso to Pop: The Richard Weisman Collection.”

The paintings are about 40 inches by 40 inches each, and were created between 1977 and 1979.

Find out more about the theft by Google-ing "Eleven Warhol Portraits Stolen" or you can read more here:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/arts-news/11-warhol-portraits-stolen/

First person to tell Ms. Ridlen which 11 portraits were stolen, gets a prize!

"In the future, everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes."

After studying Warhol and his use of celebrity in Pop Art, I thought it would be interesting to view a website that talks about his use of color.

Andy Warhol did not use local color, or realistic color in his portraits of Marilyn Monroe. Instead he used arbitrary, or non-representational colors, that depicted aspects of popular culture that he felt Marilyn Monroe was a part of. He also experimented with colors that would affect the viewer's mood. Color has a powerful impact on how we respond to an image.

Go to the website below and experiment with the colors on the Marilyn image.

Then scroll down and listen to Andy Warhol discuss his use of color in the 1981 interview. You can also read more about Warhol and his use of another printmaking method, screenprinting.

http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/marilyns.html

How does the color affect the mood of the Marilyn portrait? Does it change the way you feel about the art work?

Ms. Ridlen asked you to think about how colors and shapes can represent your identity. What expressive mood will you create with your color scheme choices? What do you want the colors to say about you to the viewer?

To earn additional points, create a drawing of an object from pop culture that you think has characteristics in common with your personality. Use arbitrary color to add symbolism and depth to the interpretation of your artwork. On the back, tell how the colors you chose represent a mood or feeling or how they enforce the personality traits you were trying to show. Make sure you put your name on it.

No.59 - L.H.O.O.Q., Marcel Duchamp (1919)

From The Guardian Portrait of the Week Series...A good image to continue our conversation about WHEN IS SOMETHING ART?

Who does art belong to? Is what Duchamp did plagiarism? Is it Art or destruction? (his image was created by defacing a postcard, not the real Mona Lisa...)

Jonathan Jones
The Guardian, Saturday 26 May 2001

Artist: Marcel Duchamp (1887- 1968), whose sense of humour first came to attention in 1917, when he submitted, under the name R Mutt, a urinal to a New York art exhibition. Duchamp anonymously defended R Mutt in a magazine, and gave a definition of his new art of the readymade: whether or not Mr Mutt made it with his own hand has no importance. He chose it. He took an everyday article, placed it so that its usual significance disappeared under the new title and point of view - and created a new thought for that object.

Subject: The Mona Lisa, painted in the 16th century by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), and the most celebrated portrait in the world.

Distinguishing features: The Mona Lisa's deep-set eyes and round face do not conflict with Duchamp's act of violence. The beard and moustache seem a completion. Duchamp said the Mona Lisa becomes a man - not a woman disguised as a man, but a real man. This hints at a different meaning from vandalism, for all the crudeness of those letters, L.H.O.O.Q., which sound out the French sentence: "She has a hot bum." This is not simply an attack on the mass-produced tourist icon the Mona Lisa had become, but rather an interpretation of it. Duchamp's Mona Lisa is a Freudian joke. Duchamp reveals, in a simple gesture, that which the painting conceals. But this is not merely an allusion to Freud. Duchamp uncovers an ambiguity of gender at the heart of Leonardo's aesthetic - that Leonardo sees the male form in the female.
This kind of hidden self-portrait is what Duchamp discovers in his rectified readymade. His Dadaist intervention redeems Leonardo's masterpiece from the banality of reproduction and returns it to the private world of creation.

Inspirations and influences: Andy Warhol also did several versions of the Mona Lisa.

Where is it? A version can be seen at Tate Modern, London SE1 (020-7887 8008).

Power and Glory: Court Arts of China's Ming Dynasty

Now at the St. Louis Art Museum!
February 22nd through May 17th, 2009

Power and Glory: Court Arts of China's Ming Dynasty is a landmark exhibition, as it is the first to showcase a full spectrum of extraordinary works made during the reign of an imperial house that ruled China from 1368 to 1644. A representative range of architectural fragments, archaeological materials, and decorative arts are featured in the exhibition, as well as paintings; ceramics; jade, gold and silver jewelry; metalwork; lacquerware; textiles; musical instruments; and woodblock printing. Many of the works have never been shown in the United States before.
With over 125 spectacular works commissioned by, or presented to, the imperial courts in both Nanjing and Beijing, the exhibition draws special attention to the hitherto neglected artistic, cultural, and technological achievements of the early Ming period, which established very high standards in terms of ingenuity of design, luxury of materials, and superb craftsmanship for the remainder of the dynasty.
The works in the exhibition have been drawn from China's finest museums—the Palace Museum, Beijing; the Nanjing Municipal Museum; and the Shanghai Museum—along with objects from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

http://saintlouis.art.museum/ming_dynasty/resources.php

Action/Abstraction Museum Exhibit

Action/Abstraction
Pollock, DeKooning,
and American Art, 1940–1976

The St. Louis Art Museum is proud to present Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940–1976. Action/Abstraction features over 50 key works from major institutions and collections throughout the U.S. and abroad. Action/Abstraction features key works by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, as well as Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, Jasper Johns, Lee Krasner, Norman Lewis, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, David Smith, Frank Stella, and Clyfford Still among many others. Action/Abstraction looks at the Abstract Expressionist movement and its legacy through the lens of Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg.

For more information, check out the St. Louis Art Museum's website. http://www.slam.org/ or more specifically http://saintlouis.art.museum/action_abstraction/about.php
The exhibition opens Tuesday–Sunday at 10:00 am. The last ticket entry will be at 4:00 pm Tuesday–Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. On Friday, the last entry will be at 8:00 pm.

See Ms. Ridlen for extra credit opportunities.