• Picasso versus the Masters: Michael Kimmelman has an interesting review in The New York Timesof Picasso and the Masters at the Grand Palais in Paris. • Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses are sweating a bit, if not a lot, these days. (The New York Times) • The Obama Store, for all your political shopping needs. Is there a similar McCain Store?
Pink and Green ink and pastel 12.7 x 27.9 cm (5" x 11")
This is an older drawing done with cheap pastels. I have no memory of doing the drawing or who the model was. The drawing has a little more style than my usual effort, for better or worse.
• Author Tony Hillerman, creator of Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police, died Sunday in Phoenix at the age of 83. (The Globe and Mail) (The Los Angeles Times) • Critic, translator, essayist, and author, Alberto Manguel, muses on Borges in a review of William Goldbloom Bloch's The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel in The New York Sun. • Fabergé's Eggs by Toby Faber is reviewed inThe Wall Street Journal.
One Side charcoal and pastel 30.5 x 22.9 cm (12" x 9")
The hair over the model's eye looks a little strange. I'm not quite sure what I was seeing when I drew the head. The whole drawing was done in a rush. I'm not even sure that I intended to put the figure as far over to the side as I did. It just happened.
I'm back from my travels sooner than expected, so it's business as usual.
• Looking for an expensive place to stay in New York? Try the Guggenheim. (CBC News) • Great design: the Union Pacific logo. (The Guardian) • The Sunday Times has a review of David Michaelis's biography of Charles Schulz, Schulz and Peanuts.
I'll be travelling for the next three weeks, pretty much out of computer range, so posts may be few and far between. On November 11th or 12th things should return to normal.
Coffee Mug on Cardboard acrylic 31.8 x 39.4 cm (12.5" x 15.5")
This was a quick study done to test some acrylic paints. It turned out fine, although, like most other artists, I find acrylics a little frustrating to use because of their fast drying time and the subsequent difficulty in blending the paint.
• From the political world, a world which just won't go away, here's something irresistible: palinaspresident.com Run your mouse over the image. You'll get the idea. (via C-Monster)
• Nocturne, Halifax's answer to Nuit Blanche, is set to run this Saturday, October 18, beginning at 6 in the evening and running all night. (View on Canadian Art) • Don't fall on these tracks! British Rail rejects falling sculpture. (The Globe and Mail) • Time to rethink charity art auctions? (Art To Go)
• 100 people you should invite to dinner, according to the ArtReview and the Telegraph. (via C-Monster) • 'No good deed ever goes unpunished' is something for every artist and patron to keep in mind. (the weekly Standard) • If you have ever marveled at the drawings, constructions, and mobiles of Alexander Calder, the Whitney Museum of American Art's new exhibition, Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933, may provide you with some insight into their development. The exhibition is reviewed in The New York Times along with a video clip from Le Grand Cirque Calder 1927, a film by Jean Painlevé.
Wild charcoal and pastel 22.9 x 30.5 cm (9" x 12")
Wild refers to the model's hair, which was done in wild dreadlocks. The model's mother is an artist/graphic designer, and I suspect that the model will follow her mother into the arts.
• $7000 worth of prints were stolen from the car of a Winnipeg artist. (CBC News) • Is 'old genius' a contradiction in terms? Comparing Picasso and Cézanne among others in The New Yorker. • Nabokov's Lolita: porn or passion? (The Chronicle Review) • Don't get him started. That is Hans Ohanian, author of Einstein's Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius, which is reviewed by George Johnson in The Los Angeles Times.
This version of Strange Fruit was recorded five months before Holiday's death. The song is based on a poem about the lynching of two men in the American South ('strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees...'), and was originally recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. It became her biggest hit.
• David Apatoff looks at the life of adventurous American illustrator, Martha Sawyers, 1902-88. (Illustration Art) • Bill Henson won't go away in Australia. (the art life and the Art News Blog) • Custom-made life-size lego sculptures of Mom and Dad for Christmas? Boys and girls, can you say, " Neiman Marcus " ? (Art News Blog)
Twin Cushions charcoal and pastel 30.5 x 45.7 cm (12" x 18")
By the way the model is clutching the two cushions it looks like she's madly in love with them. Come to think of it, she was madly in love with them.
There's a third, smaller cushion and a parabolic heater behind the model. The model also had a patch of dye green hair, visible at the top of the drawing.
• Seven early portraits by Lucian Freud from Lucian Freud, Early Works, 1940-1958 at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert in London, Oct. 9 to Dec. 12, can be found in The Guardian along with a commentary by David Dawson, Freud's longtime assistant. • An Iqaluit art dealer, who sells Inuit art, is eBay Canada's Entrepreneur of the Year. (CBC News) • French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézo has won this year's Nobel Prize for literature. (The New York Times)
Model and Square gouache 45.7 x 27.9 cm (18" x 11")
This started out as an ink drawing and somehow ended up as a painting. The square is there for no good reason. It's just the bad example of Francis Bacon.
• The Telegraph is bullish on Middle Eastern art. • Edmund White, author of a new biography of Rimbaud, talks Rimbaud. (ARTFORUM) • Swedes have no clue (about American literature), or so says Adam Kirsch in an article about the Nobel prize committee for literature. (Slate)
Sienna Hip charcoal and pastel 45.7 x 25.4 cm (18" x 10")
This drawing is a little confusing. Just what is the model doing? Well, one leg is resting on an upright pedestal covered with a black cloth while she holds on to a pillar with her left hand, and stares straight ahead.
This was a twenty minute pose which was half over before I began drawing.
Francis Bacon discussing risk and reality with Melvin Bragg: part 6 of 6 of a 1985 South Bank show on Francis Bacon.
Parts 1 and 2 were posted last weekend. They should still be on this page. Part 3 was Saturday. I've reposted Part 4 to go along with Part 5, both of which on now on yesterday's post. This gives a bit of order to the series.
Francis Bacon discussing life, death, and gambling with Melvin Bragg: part 5 of 6 of a 1985 South Bank show on Francis Bacon.
Parts 1 and 2 were posted last weekend. They should still be on this page. Part 3 was yesterday, and Part 4 was posted on Saturday, September 13. The entire series is available on YouTube. Part 6 will follow some time this week.
Francis Bacon discussing art and photography with Melvin Bragg: part 3 of 6 of a 1985 South Bank show on Francis Bacon. Bacon has some intelligent things to say in this excerpt.
Parts 1 and 2 were posted last weekend. They should still be on this page. Part 4 was posted on Saturday, September 13. The entire series is available on YouTube. Parts 5 will follow tomorrow.
• Winnipeg, The World Capital of Sorrow, Allegedly. Morgan Falconer contemplates Winnipeg through the eyes of the Royal Art Lodge. (Saatchi Gallery) (Nice to know that someone is contemplating Winnipeg. The capital of sorrow sounds quite romantic to me. I'll have to start wearing more black.) • The Censor in the Mirror is the title of an excellent essay by Ha Jin in The American Scholar. It concerns the Chinese Communist Party’s feared and hated Propaganda Department.
• Pamela Anderson, art collector? David Beckham, painter? (The Telegraph) • Bansky's refusal to authenticate his work kills a London auction. (CBC News) • Yves St. Laurent's massive art collection will be auctioned off. (CBC News) • Philanthropist Michael Audain has given the Vancouver Art Gallery a $2 million endowment to be used to purchase work from emerging artists. (The Globe and Mail)
The tranquil nature of this scene belies its' location. This is the Red River close to downtown Winnipeg. On the far side of the river, behind the trees, is a residential neighbourhood, and on the near side a railway line and a major roadway run alongside the river.
