Kaveh Golestan: Prostitute Series, 1975–7

Untitled, Prostitute Series, 168 x 248 mm

Kaveh Golestan was born in 1950, Tehran, Iran. He was a photojournalist and an artist who worked in both Iran and Britain.

Untitled, Prostitute Series, 247 x 167 mm

Kaveh Golestan’s socially engaged photography exposes the plight of people living on the margins of society.

Untitled, Prostitute Series, 247 x 167 mm

This series of portraits, taken between 1975 and 1977, documents sex workers from the former red light district, Shahr-e No, in Tehran, Iran. Following the 1953 Iranian coup a wall was erected around the area, creating an inner-city ghetto where approximately 1,500 women lived and worked. Here Golestan witnessed ‘the social, financial, hygienic, behavioural and psychological problems that exist in everyday society… magnified.’

Untitled, Prostitute Series, 167 x 247 mm
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 248 x 167 mm

Golestan spent several years researching the area and gaining the trust of the residents, developing a connection with his subjects evidenced by the sensitivity of his portraits. Golestan believed in the power of art to challenge accepted narratives. By documenting harsh realities with brutal honesty he hoped to raise awareness of the issues facing society and encourage the public to take action.

Untitled, Prostitute Series, 248 x 167 mm
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 167 x 248 mm
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 248 x 167 mm

Golestan commented, ‘I want to show you images that will be like a slap in your face to shatter your security. You can look away, turn off, hide your identity … but you cannot stop the truth. No one can.’

Untitled, Prostitute Series, 245 x 157 mm
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 247 x 167 mm
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 167 x 247 mm

During the Iranian revolution of 1979 Shahr-e No was deliberately set alight. The authorities made no attempt to put out the fire and there are no records of how many women died.

Untitled, Prostitute Series, 248 x 167 mm
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 248 x 167 mm

Under the newly formed Islamic Republic, the area was demolished in an act of ‘cultural cleansing’ and today bears no reference to its past. Golestan’s images are among the last known records of the women of Shahr-e No.

Untitled, Prostitute Series, 247 x 167 mm
Untitled, Prostitute Series, 248 x 167 mm

 

You can now visit this exhibition at Tate Modern.


Photo Credit: Kaveh Golestan Estate

Biography: Art Road

Notes: Tate Modern

iconoclasts: art out of the mainstream

Thomas Mailaender

Iconoclasts: Art Out of the Mainstream

Iconoclasts explore the experimental and often transformational practices of thirteen groundbreaking artists, inviting us to engage anew with what modern day iconoclasm might be.

Thomas Mailaender

 

Daniel Crews-Chubb

By using a myriad of unusual image-making practices from branding imagery onto human skin to sculpting curving structures out of crow feathers – these artists are breaking the mould, ushering a new age of artistic defiance through their resistance to typical artistic processes and their personal interpretations of cultural mores.

Josh Faught

 

Alexi Williams Wynn – Douglas White

 

Dale Lewis

 

Makiko Kudo

Born in 1978, Aomori prefecture, Japan. Lives and works in Kanagawa prefecture, Japan.

Makiko Kudo, Stage Curtain, Oil on canvas, 194.5 x 259.2 cm, 2011

 

Makiko Kudo, Stage Curtain, Detail

The realm of dreams and memory is one that Kudo’s figures inhabit. Rather than confronting or depicting the world as it is, Kudo rejects it by escaping from it – deriving the motifs from everyday life and her own imagination.

Makiko Kudo, Floating Island, Oil on canvas
227 x 364.6 cm, 2012

 

Makiko Kudo, Floating Island, Detail

 

Makiko Kudo, Floating Island, Detail

 

Makiko Kudo

 

Makiko Kudo, Gray Town, Oil on canvas
227.5 x 365 cm, 2011

 

Makiko Kudo, Gray Town, Detail

 

Makiko Kudo, Gray Town, Detail

 

Makiko Kudo, Invisible, Oil on canvas
182.0 x 227.5 cm, 2011

 

Makiko Kudo, Burning Red, Oil on canvas
181.5 x 227 cm, 2012

“I feel like a kind of a ghost in a thin and flimsy world. Because I lack a sense of volume and reality. I sense reality more in my dreams. Constructing a painting in similar to dreaming. Shuffling different landscapes, creating stories and connecting them with emotion and imagination, like a collage or a jigsaw puzzle.”

Makiko Kudo, I See Season, Oil on canvas
259.5 x 389 cm, 2010

 

Makiko Kudo, I See Season, Detail

 

Makiko Kudo, I See Season, Detail

 


Photography: Art Road

Notes: Saatchi Gallery

SOUL OF A NATION: ART IN THE AGE OF BLACK POWER

This exhibition celebrates the work of Black artists working in the united states in the two decades after 1963. During this turbulent time, these artists asked and answered many questions. How should an artist respond to political and cultural changes? Was there a ‘Black art’ or a ‘Black aesthetic’? Should an artist create legible images or make abstract work? Was there a choice to be made between addressing a specifically Black audience or a ‘universal’ one? The exhibition looks at responses to such questions.

In 1963, when the exhibition begins, the American Civil Rights Movement was at its height. At the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington D.C., Dr Martin Luther King, Jr dreamed that his children would live in ‘a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character’.
King referred to himself proudly as ‘Negro’, but by this time, many who were on the March were beginning to call themselves Black. Taking issue with King’s non-violent position, especially after appalling racist violence later in 1963, many joined in calls for ‘Black Power’.
Others rejected in idea of an integrated America, and began to speak of a separate, autonomous Black Nation. Looking at newly independent African nations, and understanding an ancestral connection to the continent, the terms ‘Afro-American’ and ‘African American’ also began to take root. The artists in Soul of a Nation were profoundly aware of these political visions and different senses of self, and each took an aesthetic position in relation to them.
Reginald Gammon, Freedom Now, Acrylic paint on board, 1963

Norman Lewis
“America the Beautiful”
In a small series of works, he set aside his flair for colour to concentrate on black and white, in order to reflect on race relations in America. Here, lewis evokes a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan, while titling the work to suggest the difference between America’s vision of itself and its realities.
Norman Lewis, America the Beautiful, Oil paint on canvas, 1960

 

Romare Bearden The Dove Photostat on Fibreboard 1964

Wadsworth Jarrell
“Black Prince”
Black Prince is a portrait of Malcolm X, made for the second AfriCOBRA exhibition in 1971 held, like their first, at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It is based on a May 1963 photograph of Malcolm X in Harlem, speaking against segregation and ‘Uncle Tom Negro preachers’.
Wadsworth Jarrell Black Prince Acrylic paint on canvas

 

Wadsworth Jarrell Liberation soldiers Acrylic paint and foil canvas


Kay Brown 
“The Divel and His Game”
Kay Brown was for a time the sole woman member of Weusi artist collective, named after the Swahili word for ‘blackness’, and would go on to be an influential member of Where We At! In The Devil and His Game, Brown comments on then-US president Richard Nixton’s foreign and domestic policies.
Kay Brown  The Divel and His Game Paper and acrylic paint on canvas 1970

 

Jeff Donaldson, Wives of Sango, Acrylic paint, gold foil and silver foil on cardboard, 1979

 

Ed Clark 
“Yenom (#9)”
 Ed Clark was a part of the second generation of abstract expressionist and in 1957 was the first American artist to experiment with irregularity shaped canvases.
Ed Clark, Yenom (#9), 1970

 

 

William T. Williams
“Trane”
 This painting was named after John Coltrane and may conjure the cascades of sound in his performances.
William T. Williams, Trane Acrylic paint on canvas, 1969

 

Jack Whitten
“Homage to Malcolm”
Most of his late 1960s works were colourful with expressive brushstrokes, however Homage to Malcolm is very clearly structured and is the artist’s only triangular painting.
Jack Whitten, Homage to Malcolm, Acrylic paint on canvas,1970

Andy Warhol
“Muhammad Ali”
The palette of red, black and green shares its colours with the pan-African flag where red represents the blood uniting the African diaspora, black as representative of its people, and green being the natural riches of the African continent.
Andy Warhol, Muhammad Ali, Acrylic paint and screenprint on canvas, 1978

 

Barkley Hendricks
“Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved any Black People – Bobby Seale)”
Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved any Black People – Bobby Seale) is a self-portrait, trimmed with a border evoking the American flag. Barkley Hendricks painted himself wearing a novelty T-shirt, provocatively nude from the waist down. The work’s subtitle invites a declarative statement of solidarity with the Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale.
Barkley Hendricks, Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved any Black People – Bobby Seale), Oil paint, acrylic paint and aluminium leaf on canvas,1969

 

Gerald Williams
“Nation Time”
Gerald Williams was one of the five founding members of AfriCOBRA. For Williams, ‘Nation’ referred not to America but to a separate Black nation. Amiri Baraka used the word in the same way in his poem of the same year, ‘It’s Nation Time’, and Jeff Donaldson used the phrase too in the landmark AfriCOBRA text, ’10 in Search of a Nation’, also 1970: ‘It’s NATION TIME and we re now searching.

 

Gerald Williams, Nation Time, Acrylic paint on canvas, 1970

 

 

David Hammons
“Injustice Case”
Injustice Case refers to Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale’s trial for conspiracy to incite violence, during which Seale was bound and gagged in the courtroom. Hammons cut an American flag to frame the image (itself a punishable offence), effectively making this shocking scene from the halls of justice an x-ray of America.

David Hammons,  Injustice Case,  Body print and screenprint on paper, frame wrapped with American Flag,  1970

 

Barkley Hendricks
“What’s Going on”
Five figures stand nearly life-size. Amalgamations of people real and imagined, the nude woman is modelled on Hendricks’s recurring model, dancer Adrienne Hawkins, and the youngest man in rose-tined glasses is based on the artist’s brother. Hendricks conveys a range of complexions by seamlessly transitioning between highly malleable, slow-drying oil paint and fast-dying acrylic to suggest different textures and surfaces.

Barkley Hendricks,  What’s Going on Oil paint, acrylic paint and acrylic resin paint on canvas,  1974

 

Barkley Hendricks
“Brilliantly Endowed (Self-Portrait)”
Brilliantly Endowed is a self-portrait that demonstrates swagger – defiance and cool detachment – as an everyday act of revolutionary aesthetics. Hendricks subtly targets New York Times critic Hilton Kramer, who had concluded a 1977 review by calling that artist ‘a brilliantly endowed painter who erred, perhaps, on the side of slickness’. The artist tackles head-on the double entendre and its potential stereotype connotation of Black male anatomy, while also putting on show his confidence as a painter, upending ‘slickness’ to embrace it as an attribute.

Barkley Hendricks,  Brilliantly Endowed (Self-Portrait),  Oil paint and acrylic paint on canvas,  1977

 

Alice Neel
“Faith Ringgold”
Alice Neel, a white artist, was an ardent supporter of the equal representation of Black people – both through her own selection of sitters, such as this portrait of artist Faith Ringgold, and in her social actions.

Alice Neel, Faith Ringgold, Oil paint on canvas, 1977

 

 

Emma Amos
“Eva the Babysitter”
Emma Amos was the sole woman artist in the Spiral group. The circumstances of socially-accepted domestic and child rearing responsibilities compounded the challenges women artists faced. This image honours a woman who helped enable Amos’s artistic practice. The radiant child-carer smiled while the artist’s toddler daughter is barely contained by the canvas.

Emma Amos,  Eva the Babysitter,  Oil pain on canvas, 1973

 

Carolyn Lawrence, Black Children Keep Your Spirits Free, Acrylic paint on canvas, 1972

 

virginia jaramillo, Untitled, Acrylic paint on canvas, 1971

 

Joe Overstreet
“We Came from There to get Here”
In he early 1960s, Joe Overstreet Was making image-based painting clearly expressing the political goals of Black Power; he was closely associated with the Black Arts Movement, and painted backdrops for the jazz musician Sun Ra. He later turned to making more abstract work, here painting a colourful grid and drawing the outlines of figures giving gestures of empowerment.

Joe Overstreet, We Came from There to get Here, Acrylic pain on canvas and rope, 1970

 

Frank Bowling
“Texas Louise”
Texas Louise was one of six Map Paintings Bowling included in his solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in late 1971. He poured waves of acrylic over stencils of continents that were removed before more paint was applied, so ghostly outlines remain. Continents emerge from and disappear into colour; oceans and rivers are combined with pools and trails of liquid paint. While many Black Americans were pointing to Africa as a mother continent, Bowling’s maps do not privilege any particular place, and celebrate a more fluid and open idea of identity and belonging to the world.

Frank Bowling,  Texas Louise,  Acrylic paint on canvas,  1971


Photography: Art Road

Notes: Tate Modern

Istanbul Modern

Artists In Their Time

Istanbul Modern’s collection exhibition, “Artists In Their Time”, focuses on how artists position their work and themselves within the concept of time. It suggests a conceptual field for examining, and reconciling, the links between an artist’s time and societal, cultural, natural and universal time. It unites artists from very different periods, geographies and disciplines around common themes.

“Artists In Their Time” highlights how artists experience their own times, feel anxious and frustrated that time emerges from the past and flows into the future, and form bonds between their own internal time and that of others. The exhibition also presents a base for discussing the place of art in transience and change and the transformation of art. Through which times does a work of art pass to become part of the present, of the moment we are now observing? What is the meaning of the temporal relationship that works of art establish with one another? What conditions do works of art resist, or what conditions are they absorbed into, in order to maintain their relevance in the future?

Art Road Visiting Istanbul Modern
BAD 2014 – High density foam, wood, mirror and painted glass

Doug Aitken

‘In Aitken’s works composed of graphic texts, we notice words such as Now, End, Speed, You, One, Bad, Space and Home. Through these works, Aitken crystallizes the meaning of words that are repeated or or questioned in modern life. In some of these works, the surfaces are mirrors, in others they are covered with diverse images, such as the sea, leaves, planets, or black and white photographs. The artist freezes an idea or word in fluid time and makes it still.

As is the case in “BAD”, works having a mirrored surface give viewers the sensation of peering through a kaleidoscope. When we look through a kaleidoscope, the reflection of light forms colorful patterns. When we rotate a kaleidoscope, the image we see constantly changes and non-repeating images appear. In this work, too, the light of one moment is never the same as that of another moment. The time of the work and the conditions of the space within which it is displayed constantly change. Aitken thus addresses the difficulty of holding on to an idea or image in today’s dynamic and rapidly transforming world.’

 

Abstract (Temporality…Water…Sun) 1953 – Oil on canvas

Fahrelnissa Zeid

‘Her artistic practice can be classified under the following periods: Her early period of figurative compositions with spaces constructed according to the style of miniatures; her period of maturity with geometric and freely abstractionist works reminiscent of stained glass surfaces; and her late period consisting mainly of portraits and in which psychological narrative comes to the fore.

“Abstract (Temporality… Water…Sun)”, from the artist’s period of maturity, was produced during the École de Paris period that emerged in Paris following World War ll and was dominated by non-figurative abstract art. The painting combines colors and movements that emphasize the chaos and dynamism of the earth, the universe, and humane nature.’

 

Sculpture With a Monkey Skull Dancing in front of Sarkis’ Big Times-1989-2009
The first and only Turkish version colored neons and a sculpture from the Congo

Sarkis

‘The words in the neon work featured in his solo exhibition “Site”, which opened at Istanbul Modern in September 2009, indicate the different stages of his career. Sarkis comments on this work: “The stages of my career in art were written in neon like the names of night club singers. An African sculpture with a monkey’s skull dances in front of them.” ‘

 

Aus Gelbroorange wird Blaudunkel 2012- Oil on canvas

Georg Baselitz 

‘Adopting an attitude opposed to the ordinary, the artist conveys the hardships of the Nazi era in his works about German history through ruins, rebels, shepherds, trees and other figures. These forms in his paintings reproduce the image of melancholy and eliminate the feeling of pity. Through the material that he uses and the tension he creates in content and composition, he calls into question the human condition. 

Baselitz work in Istanbul Modern, collection “Yellowred Orange Turns into Bluedark” (Aus Gelbrotorange wire Blaudunkel), features the deformed, upside-down images created with strong brush strokes that appear again and again in his work as a reaction to past tribulations and his constructed pessimism of the present. ‘

 

Abstract Composition 1947-1949- Oil on canvas

Nejad Melih Devirm

‘ “Abstract Composition” is the earliest-known example of an abstract painting by a Turkish artist. In this painting, surfaces divided into geometrical domains complete one another in a rhythmic balance, while color is used freely without implying any image of “nature”. Distinctive coloring methods are used for each area, producing different layered depths on the surfaces.’

 

Born / Bearing in to Death 2001- Photograph

Gül Ilgaz

‘In her work she examines the contradictions between East and West, or traditional and modern. At the same time, she puts the dilemmas of her own life under the microscope. She explores various aspects of a woman’s identity from a personal standpoint.

In her work “Born/Bearing in to Death”, Gül Ilgaz treats birth as the beginning of death. The photograph shows not so much the physical side of birth as the separation of mother and child after delivery, the loss of their oneness. In the photograph, the child is across the room from the mother, but it has no existence of its own; the mother shows both the separation that comes with birth and the beginning of death.’

 

Part 2014- Oil paint and paper on linen

Elliot Hundley

‘In Hundley’s work “Part”, featured in Istanbul Modern’s collection, the architecture of intertwining spiral forms takes the viewer on a profound journey through a monumental and surreal space. The performative expression in Hindley’s working process, the layers formed by interwoven images, the small figure hidden among these layers and details of different places are like the equivalent of narrative on the abstract plane.

 

Adnan Çoker
Magenta Square 1996- Acrylic on canvas
Art Road Visiting Istanbul Modern
The Headless Woman or The Bellydance 1974- Video, black and white with sound

Nil Yalter

‘In the video she focuses her camera on her own belly and writes on it an excerpt from Erotique et Civilization by René Nelli to the accompaniment of belly-dancing music. She therefore draws together the Oriental fantasies of men and the demand for bodily freedom of women.

“A veritable woman in ‘convex’ and ‘concave’ at the same time. But she need not be deprived mentally or physically of the central part of her convexity: the clitoris (…). This aversion to the clitoris corresponds to man’s ancestral horror of this virile and natural part of woman, this part which is capable of absolute orgasm.” René Nelli, Erotic and Civilizations (Paris:Wber, 1972)’

 

Art Road Visiting Istanbul Modern
Red V 2005- Fiberglass

Seyhun Topuz

‘Seyhun Topuz has used sculpture to make geometric, abstract statements. Her designs are made of forms not found in nature but rather shaped by notions of mathematical order and precision. 

“Red V” is an example of recent work in which she explores how to achieve ideal forms by dissecting squares. Its sense of motion is created by the perfectly smooth, angular surfaces, which stand for nothing but themselves. The sculpture’s relationship with the floor is severed by platforms of varying heights. Topuz’s work strips the art of sculpture to its basic elements. ‘

 

BC (3030) 2012- Collage, paint, bleach, glue, fabric on wood

Sterling Ruby

‘Having exhibited work since 2004, he is relatively new to the art scene, but his installations, paintings, video, ceramics, and sculpture have gained considerable international recognition. In BC(3030), Ruby uses patches of fabric with different patterns and textures as his visual vocabulary, collaging these elements onto a canvas that has been painted, distressed, and stained with bleach. It utilizes striped  Mexican rugs that evoke Hispanic culture and gangs in Los Angeles.’

 

Under the Grand Crack (and Sleep, Growth and All Words) 2008- Oil on canvas

Margherita Manzelli

‘Manzelli uses both symbolic and ordinary articles like a heart-patterned underwear or a sequin top to define the bodies of the women she typically depicts. The women’s easily bruised, fine, veined skin and delicate bone structure that could break with the slightest shock make them vulnerable. Their facial and bodily expressions give the impression of a sensitive wound in the process of recovery and are reminiscent of melancholy and illness.’

 

Your solar nebula 2015- 321 partially silvered crystal spheres, paint, stainless steel

Olafur Eliasson

‘The artist’s work “Your solar nebula” is composed of 321 glass spheres reminiscent of natural phenomena, such as water droplets or teardrops. There are three colors at the back of each sphere: a silver mirror-like surface at the center merging with black paint to the right and yellow paint to the left. The spheres are of different sizes and, when seen as a whole, seem to be frozen in a way that is reminiscent of stars coming together to form a spiral galaxy. This form has no geometric outline or arrangement and invokes a moment without predetermined coordinates, like the flow of a stream of water or a shooting star.’

 

Art Road Visiting Istanbul Modern
Tony Cragg- Ugly Faces 2006- Wood
Morgenthau Plan 2012- Acrylic, emulsion, oil and shellac on photograph mounted on canvas

Anselm Kiefer

‘This work called “Morgenthau Plan” is from a series of the same title. The Morgenthau Plan proposed by the USA in 1944 aimed to convert post-war Germany into an agricultural country rather than an industrial one. Though the plan was never realized in its proposed form, it did create an alternative field of thought in terms of its emphasis on rural life as opposed to industrial development. In his works, Kiefer explores this rural way of life. As leitmotifs, the flowers concealed in the background or openly displayed on the surface refer to the ideal of a pastoral Germany with its agricultural fields and an increasing amount of farmland just prior to post-war industrial development. In the work, the flowers that bloom despite all the cultural, political, and ecological damage are not just motifs; as in the other works in the series, by affixing their photographs on the canvases using the marouflage technique, he readies the backgrounds for his works.’

 

Canan Dağdelen

‘In her latest work, entitled “AT polar covalent bonded HOME dot”, she examines the concept of the “house” from different perspectives. While Dagdelen previously used existing fundamental architectural forms, in her latest work she goes one step further and crates an architectural shape of her own. In this work, she refers to the chemical bonds resulting from changes in electron distributing caused by the bonding of atoms. The covalent, particularly the polar covalent bond, is Dagdelen’s focus. Dagdelen draws an analogy between the function of architectural elements and a common polar covalent bonded attraction between the two different types of atoms that come together in a water molecule, H2O, and the sharing of electrons in the outer electron trajectory. She achieves a new fork in the work entitled “AT polar covalent bonded HOME dot”, which consists of two domes and one cubic body. The way in which it is situated in space encourages viewers to seek its form and discover its own unique language.’

 

“Tips” 2015- textile collage, acrylic paint and ink

Servet Koçyiğit

‘Koçyiğit observes his places of residence both as an insider and outsider, and reflects his observations in his artistic practice by considering them jointly with local and global issues and contexts. He pulls everyday concerns, conventional functions, routine tasks, ordinary household utensils or found objects out of context and imparts them with new meanings or reconsiders them within entirely different contexts.’

 

Tomas Saraceno

‘His project “Air-Port-City” from 2007, made of airbags and nets, is a light but massive structure that references atomic forms. Saraceno presents architectural alternatives to our notions about nationality, property, city plans and territorial boundaries. He designs technically possible but utopic solutions to our socio-cultural and environmental problems. 

“The Air-Port-City” project aims to create free-floating international cities that are independent of territorial borders and which redefine political and economical system. He designs technically feasible utopias in answer to socio-cultural and ecological problems. “The Flying Garden” project is made of garden modules that reflect the intrinsic, chaotic harmony of ecological structures in this new utopia.’

 

1553
2012- Oil on canvas

Taner Ceylan

‘The title of Ceylan’s painting “1553”, inspired by Süleyman the Magnificent’s wife Hürrem Sultan, is a reference to the year when Süleyman had his son Prince Mustafa killed. The blood spread on the painting’s surface reminds us of the tension between power, force, and violence. According to Ceylan eternal life and everlasting beauty always requires sacrifice. The veil that conceals the face of the subject in the painting also symbolizes the way power nourishes itself on a covert violence. The artist works with people in his close circle such as Alp, the model for this painting, whom he has often used as a model in his previous works. ‘


Photography: Art Road

Notes: Istanbul Modern

Harland Miller, One Bar Electric Memoir

The first series of large-scale works draws on Miller’s extensive archive of psychology and social science books, which date from the 1960s and ’70s. Characterised by their bold and colourful abstract covers, these books embraced a positive attitude and the possibility of ‘fixing’ disorders through a process of self-help.

Pot, Oil on canvas, 105 x 72 x 2 in. 2017
Colour Made Me Hard, Oil on canvas, 109 x 73 x 2 in. 2016
In the Shadows I Boogie, Oil on canvas, 60 x 36 x 2 in. 2017

In Miller’s paintings, three-dimensional architectonic forms in bright, pop colours float against solid saturated backgrounds and are paired with fictional, sardonically humorous titles such as Reverse Psychology Isn’t Working (2017) and Immediate Relief … Coming Soon (2017). Occasionally, the same title appears on different compositions, highlighting how colour, forms and context can change both the rhythm and meaning of words.

Reverse Psychology Isn’t Working, Oil on canvas, 115 x 81 x 2 in. 2017
Immediate Relief … Coming Soon, Oil on canvas, 118 x 81 x 2 in. 2017

Similar to the titles, Miller’s abstract imagery can also be read in different ways. Commenting on the work Armageddon – Is It To Much To Ask? (2017), for example, he says: ‘it’s an image that you see one way – then, when you relax, it flips and, no matter how hard you try, you can’t see it the original way. It’s symbolic of the way you read the title.’ These words reflect a departure for the artist, whose previous series of Penguin paperback paintings were re-appropriations of an existing object. Here, for the first time, Miller creates his own designs, focusing more closely on the impact of the image itself.

Why Breathe In, Why Breath Out, Oil on canvas, Two panels, each: 75 x 61 x 2 in. 2017
Ace, Oil on canvas, 105 x 75 x 2 in. 2017
Bi, Oil on canvas, 104 x 72 x 2 in. 2017

In another series of fictional book cover paintings, Miller depicts the outlines of letter in a range of typefaces and colours, intersected or layered over each other to create short, enigmatic words such as ‘Up’ or ‘If’.

Up, Oil on canvas, 104 x 73 x 2 in. 2017
If, Oil on canvas, 104 x 72 x 2 in. 2017

Through a process of isolation, overlaying and re-connecting, Miller creates a sense of depth in the image that deconstructs and abstracts the meaning of language itself. With their bold, saturated colours, these paintings reference American abstraction and, in particular, Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Ruscha’s use of vernacular signage and motifs. Miller has said about this series: ‘The idea is to make paintings that are just words, in contrast to the titles of previous works’.

Thought After Filthy Thought, Oil on canvas, 60 x 36 x 2 in. 2017
The Future, You May Not Like it Now, But You Will, Oil on canvas, 115 x 80 x 2 in. 2017

 

In both series of paintings the artist continues to use his own name as author. While the presence of Miller’s name alludes to the actual authorship of both image and text, fact and fiction became blurred, allowing for the artist’s deadpan humour to provoke, question and draw attention to the context and content of each work.

Wherever You Are, Whatever You’re Doing, This One’s For You, Oil on canvas, 112 x 77 x 2 in. 2017
Circling The Small Ads, Oil on canvas, 109 x 72 x 2 in. 2017

 

Photos: Art Road

Notes: White Cube Gallery

BP Portrait Award 2017

The Portrait Award is an annual event aimed at encouraging young artists to focus on and develop the theme of portraiture in their work.

ARCHIPELAGO

Brian Shields

Acrylic on canvas behind part-mirrored glass

This self-portrait is painted in acrylic paint and gel on canvas which was secured behind part-mirrored glass, from which the silvering had been removed. The work was made with use of two mirrors, in front of and behind the artist, to create the unsettling effect of having the sitter turn away from the viewer.

JESSICA

Laura Quinn Harris (b.1984)

Oil on board

The artist is drawing attention to the space around the sitter. You really start to look around the painting as if you were around the room. She seems to be coming out of the shadows. They seem to be as important as the sitter, and so does the background pattern. You think: ‘Where is the artist’s attention? Where does she want us to look?’

THE LEVINSONS

Rupert Alexander

Oil on canvas

This family portrait depicts Michelle and Sam Levinson and four of their five daughters. In a previous commission, Alexander had painted two of the Levinson children and that work is seen in its early stages on an easel in the studio. The family travelled from New York to London for sittings in the summer of 2015 an again early in 2016.

HONEST THOMAS

Alan Coulson

Oil on wooden panel

The portrait is of the sitter’s friend Thomas, who makes handcrafted leather objects. Coulson says: ‘While I focused on Tommy’s individual aesthetic by exploiting the graphic quality of his t-shirt and tattoos, my overall aim was to creat a strong sense of presence.

SELf-PORTRAIT

Rowanne Cowley

Oil on canvas

This self-portrait was made as part of a personal project to complete a portrait of each member of Cowley’s family in one year. Cowley works as a full-time gardener and so family sittings and painting sessions have to be organised in the evenings or during bad weather around her work schedule.

S. AT END OF SUMMER

Marco Ventura

Oil on canvas

The portrait is of a professional artist’s model at the Instituto Europe di Design, Milan. The portrait was inspired by the verses in the Book of Genesis referring to Eve choosing to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden.

ANIA

Ania Hobson

oil on canvas

This self-portrait was created during a brief period of painters’ block. Hobson says: ‘I wanted to record the frustration that I felt. This painting eventually proved to be a way of pulling myself out of this impasse, with the unrealistic angles and perspectives mirroring the feelings I had at the time.’

DR TIM MORETON

Lucy Stopford (b.1967)

oil on canvas

The portrait is of the artist’s friend. Dr Tim Moreton who for many years worked as Registrar at the National Portrait Gallery. Stopford met Moreton when he arranged for her to see a portrait that was not on display, he has gone on to sit for Stopford on several occasions and for the portrait classes that she teaches.

SIMONA

Lukas Betinsky

Oil on canvas

The portrait is of the artist’s friend Simona.

Bentinsky says: ‘The idea is based on traditional techniques. The portrait is built on simplicity, purity and the expression of the person herself.

PORTRAIT OF BEYZA

Mustafa Ozel

Oil on canvas

The artist says: ‘I look for certain characteristics in those of whom I make portraits. Having rich colours in the face is of great significance for me as is the effect of catching a fleeting emotion. I decided to make this portrait, as Beyza has these features.’

BLIND PORTRAIT

Daniel Coves

Oil on linen

In recent years, Coves has produced a series called Back Portraits in which the sitter’s identity has been hidden, this is the first front-facing portrait the artist has made in many years and the fist to reveal the identity of the sitter. In creating this work, Coves was inspired by the painting Woman reading a Letter by Johannes Vermeer.

Simona
Lukáš Betinský
Oil on canvas

PEN VOGIER

John Burke

Oil on panel

The portrait is of the artist’s friend Pen Vogler, a writer, food historian and bibliophile. Vogler recreates recipes from previous eras to discover what the past might have tasted and felt like. Bruke wanted to explore the idea of evoking the past in the present by painting her in a vintage-style dress in her victorian house.

SOCIETY

Khushna Sulamam-Butt

Acrylic and oil on canvas

The portrait depicts a group of friends the artist made at the Ruskin school of Art. Sulaman-Butt says: ‘l attempted to convey a sense of sinister isolation. The subject exchange looks in strained silence, highlighting the unspoken discomfort in their differences.’

CORINNE

Anastasia Pollard

Oil ok board

The portrait is of the artist’s friend, Corinne Allen, a musician and songwriter. Pollard says: ‘I was struck by her passion and talent and subsequently asked her to sit for me’. The portrait was completed in a few sittings during which the women developed a lasting friendship.

CARMEN

Silver Vestre Goikoetxea

Oil on panel

The portrait is of the artist’s mother who visited the artist in his studio on the way to market wearing her usual coat, beret and black gloves, which reminded him of the elegant dress-sense of the past. Goikoetxea asked if she would pose for him, and the work was developed over a series of short sittings.


Photos: Art Road

Notes: National Portrait Gallery

Rita Kernn-Larsen

Rita Kernn-Larsen (1904-98) was a Danish Surrealist painter, whom Peggy Guggenheim met in Paris in 1937 and invited to exhibit at her Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London the following year. This show initiated Guggenheim’s patronage of Surrealism.

The current exhibition inaugurates two new exhibition rooms at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Kernn-Larsen played a noteworthy part in the Surrealist movement, both in Denmark and internationally. She trained with Fernand Léger in Paris the early 1930s, distinguishing herself as his star pupil.

Searching For the Moon, 1936-37, Oil on canvas

In the Surrealist vein, Krenn-Larsen merged memories rooted in real-life experiences with dream and imagination, derived from an automatic painting method generating a stream of images from within the unconscious. Her works reflect the Surrealist desire to bridge any possible boundaries or alternative states, be they the human and the natural, dream and reality, the conscious and unconscious. A central motif in her paintings were the femme-arbres, women as arboreal creatures, which allude to the Surrealist’s identification of the female artist with the fertile natural world.

Behind the Mirror, 1937, Oil and sand on vancas
In her later years, Kernn-Larsen moved away from Surrealism towards an art based on both abstraction and nature. Her paintings were selected by the art historian Arturo Schwarz for the 1986 Venice Biennale. This exhibition marks her return to the city after more that thirty years.

The Apple From Normandy / The Apple
1934
Oil on canvas
This is one Kernn-Larsen’s earliest Surrealist paintings. It develops its biomorphic shape through an automatic technique, championed by the Surrealists, in which the subconscious freely directs the hand in tracing the line on the surface.
She explained: “I start with something realistic and its continuation is taken care of by the unconscious. The result often surprises me… there is as such a certain connection to the ‘psychoanalytic’.”

Phantoms 
1934
Oil on canvas
Phantoms originated with a drowning accident that Krenn-Larsen and her husband witnessed on vacation in Normandy at a bathing resort in late summer 1934. ” It was uncanny… two [people] went missing… I don’t think they were ever found. It made a deep impression on me,” she recalled.

Dance and Counter-dance
1936
Oil on canvas
Kernn-Larsen’s works combined memories, dreams and imagination, as the employed an automatic Surrealist painting method to generate a flow of images arising from the unconscious. This is a signature example. The artist explained, “two rhythms play against each other. I consider it to be one of my most successful pictures.”

Self-Portrait (Know Thyself) 
1937
Oil on canvas
The automatic line in this self-portrait evolves from Kernn-Larsen’s personal features. She explained: “I have taken off the shoes because I had to step into the glass.”

The Women’s Uprising
1940
Oil on canvas
The self-identification with fertile nature was frequent in Kernn-Larsen’s work. Seeing nature as female, Surrealist woman artist found in its abundant growth a metaphor for their artistic creation. Here, Kernn-Larsen developed the motif of the femme-arbres, women as arboreal figures, with their growing, sprouting branches.
Notes by: Peggy Guggenheim
Photo Credit: Art Road

the “Unbelievable”. Damien Hirst.

The Severed Head of Medusa – Malachite, 38 x 49.6 x 52 cm

As you already know we are visiting Venice and we came to attend Damien Hirst’s exhibition, “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable”. He has been absent for more than a decade and apparently he was busy working on this project, since the assemblage of the exhibition took 10 years.

In 2008 by scanning the coast of East Africa a vast wrecking was found, retrieved from the ancient sunken vessel, the Apistosalmost 2000 years ago, according to the curators.

Researches and scuba divers were astonished by the amount of art work that was submerged in the Indian Ocean for some two thousand years before. (or they want us to believe)

The Fate of a Banished Man – Carrara marble, 387 x 399 x 176 cm

The collection lent credence to the legend of Cif Amotan II, a collector who was a freed slave from Turkey, lived between the mid-first and early-second centuries. He stoled, commissioned and borrowed a massive collection, brought them together on the biggest ship of its day called the Apistos (translates from Koine Greek as the ‘Unbelievable’). The collection was meant to be used for a temple built by the collector.

“For me the show is totally about belief and it’s like you can believe whatever you want to believe. I mean I believed the story of the collector from 2000 years ago, I spent so much time on it, that it’s not a lie. I just believe it. I think you have to believe it.” Damien Hirst

There is a thin line between reality and unreality in this collection and we got quite confused ourselves going through the artworks, not sure which one belonged to the past and which one was made few years ago.

We assumed some of the gold ones could belong to the ship but still was not completely sure about our thoughts.

In one hand when you see the underwater footages, at first you think, well this is real, they actually found it under the sea, but then you realise it can be made up in order to create this uncertainty for the viewer, and on the other hand, you think it could be real and Hirst built this statues based on what he saw and was inspired.

We think that some were actually found from the Indian Ocean and are either in the exhibition or kept in a safe, and the rest was created by Damien Hirst based on the findings, but there is no actual promise for this as we are free to think whatever we want (at least for now).

This could be the theme for this show, to trust your own instincts and believe your own story, and what seems real to you. 

If this is a fictional world created by the artist, we think it’s amusing and refreshing to combine ancient world with today’s art and modern life, if not, well then it’s a bit boring to see copies.

Bust of the Collector, Bronze, 81 x 65 x 36.5

 SOMEWHERE BETWEEN LIES AND TRUTH LIES THE TRUTH. 

The exhibition is held in two venues in Venice, Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana until 3 December 2017. 


Demon with Bowl
 Standing at just over eighteen meters, this monumental figure is a copy of a smaller bronze recovered from the wreckage.
The discovery of the statue Appeared to solve the mystery of a disembodied bronze head with saurian features excavated in the Tigris Valley in 1932.

Ancient Mesopotamian demons were complex primeval creatures that exhibited elements of the human, animal and divine.

Demon with bowl, Painted resin, 1822 x 789 x 1144 cm

 

Aspect of Katie Ishtar Yo-landi
The Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar is one of the most complex and elusive figures of the ancient Near East.
This large bust has been gilded from the neck down, the sheets of gold leaf applied by devotees in the manner of temple offerings in southeast Asia.
Aspect of Katie Ishtar Yo-landi, Bronze and gold leaf 164.5 x 90.0 x 66.6 cm

Mickey, Bronze, 91 x 71 x 61 cm
Best Frieds, Bronze, 72.5 x 136.7 x 82 cm
Head of Sphinx, Silver, paint
Sinner, Silver, paint
Two Garudas, Silver, paint

 

Sun Disc
Solar disc presents a human face emerging from a harmonic low relief pattern of intersecting rays. Sun worship is reflective of the universal human need to comprehend the mysteries of life, death and the beyond. 
Sun Disc, Gold, Silver 122 x 122 x 21 cm
Andromeda and the Sea Monster, Bronze, 391 x 59305 x 369.5 cm
Hermaphrodite 
 According to myth, Hermaphroditus was the son of hermes and Aphrodite and the personification of youthful beauty. One day, he was accosted by the enamoured nymph Salmacis whilst he bathed. As she gripped his body, the nymph prayed that the two might be eternally united in their ‘clinging embrace’, at which, the fused into into one being: half man, half woman, seemingly ‘neither and both’ (Ovid).

Hermaphrodite, Bronze, 194 x 96.4 x 36.5 cm
The Severed Head of Medusa 
From the Roman era onwards, Medusa’s great beauty became one of her most prominent characteristics. The late-medieval poet Christine de Pizan described her as a figure ‘of such striking beauty that not only did she surpass all other women, but she also attracted to herself, every mortal creature upon whom she looked’.

The Severed Head of Medusa , Malachite , 38 x 49.6 x 52 cm
The Severed Head of Medusa, Gold, silver, 32 x 39.7 x 39.7
Hydra and Kali
Depicting the all-encompassing cosmic nature of a deity through a multiplicity of limbs is an Indian practice that dates from the Kushan period (second century BCE to third century CE). Whilst a many-headed snake (nāga) also features prominently in Hindu mythology, this seven-headed beast more closely recalls the Greek Hydra.
Hydra and Kali, Bronze, 539 x 612 x 244 cm
  
Tadukheba, Carrara marble, emeralds and rock crystal, 43.7 x 30.2 x 26.5 cm

 

Sphinx
This sphinx’s idealised female attributes recall Roman examples dating from the first and second centuries CE.
Sphinx, Bronze, 123.1 x 177.5 x 68.4 cm

 

Unknown Pharaoh
 While the identity of this figure is unknown, his pharaonic statues is confirmed by the nemes ( headcloth) he sports. A prominent uraeus (royal cobra) and vulture’s head coil upwards from his brow: a symbol of the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt that occurred around 3100 BCE.
Unknown Pharaoh

Aten
The practice of tattooing in Egypt is in evidence from around 2000 BCE and was traditionally associated with Nubian musicians and dancers. With her bejeweled nudity exultant expression, this figure expresses the power of the supreme solar god, Aten, in terms analogous to the ecstasy of sexual love.
Aten, Red marble, grey agate and gold leaf, 127.3 64.5 65.5 cm

 

Calendar, Stone, Bronze, 422.5 x 475.8 x 172.3 cm

The Diver
 Poised on tiptoe, this double-sized bronze figure would have been displayed in a j : a shrine built on the site of a natural grotto. Grottoes were extremely popular in Greece and Rome, and large-scale artificial versions were sculpted in replication of natural rock formations. 
The Diver, Bronze, 473 x 90 x 83 cm

 

The Collector with Friend, Bronze, 185.5 x 123.5 x 73 cm
 
Cronos Devouring his Children, Bronze, 312.5 x 334.3 x 253.5 cm
Two Figures with a Drum, Bronze, 556.6 x 238 x 274 cm

The Monk , Bronze, 377.6 x 294 x 216 cm

The Warrior and the Bear
This monumental sculpture relates to the ancient Greek maturation ritual of arkteia, which involved groups of Athenian girls imitating she-bears, whilst dancing and performing sacrifices. This act of sanctioned wildness served to appease Artemis – goddess of the hunt – following the Athenians’ slaying of a bear. While the practice of arkteia was intended to expel the animalistic qualities of a woman’s nature in preparation for a life of domesticity, this figure subverts the tradition by celebrating the ferocity that inhered within the goddess.
The Warrior and the Bear, Bronze, 713 x 260 x 203 cm
The Shield of Achilles, Gold, silver, 144 x 112.5 x 7 cm
Skull of a Unicorn, Gold, silver 126.5 x 22.3 x 74.6 cm

 

Children of a Dead King
This composition depicts a romanticised scene from the story of the defeat of Rome’s deadliest enemy, Mithradates VI (120-63 BCE), King of Pontus.
The sculpture is presented alongside a contemporaneous, war-damaged version, which is riddled with bullet holes.
Children of a Dead King, Bronze, 197.7 x 138.3 x 89.1 cm
Pair of Slaves Bound for Execution, Painted bronze, 179.4 x 139.2 x 85.6 cm
Winged Horse, Bronze, 43.2 x 35.8 x 13.5cm

Lion women of Asit Mayor, Bronze, 170 x 154 x 315 cm 169.5 x 134 x 300.5 cm
 
Mermaid, Bronze, 459.5 x 208 x 233 cm

Photo credit: Art Road

Introduction: Art Road

Photo description: Punta della Dogana, Palazzo Grassi