Sunday, March 02, 2008
Art Market Update
Souren Melikian writes about record sale (s) of contemporary art at Sothebys + other viewpoints @ http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/28/arts/melik29.php
David Hockney
David Hockney is an English artist, based in Los Angeles, California, United States + he has been an important contributor to the British Pop art movement of the 1960s + he is considered one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century + I like his realistic narrative style/vibrant colors in portraiture works.
Useful links:
www.hockneypictures.com
www.davidhockney.com
Useful links:
www.hockneypictures.com
www.davidhockney.com
The New World
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
As Colonial America rapidly grew, wealth did indeed come from the land, but not at first in the guise of gold mines. All luxuries and many necessities were shipped from overseas. The arts and crafts of skill, even when and if, practised on American soil, were considered inferior to foreign work. Fine furniture, mirrors, glassware in general, clothing and jewelry were imported for the use of the rich.
In the South especially, the wealthy planter, selling his cotton and indigo abroad, spent money with a free hand, importing for his own use gems, jewelry adn silverplate. Many an old will lists, ‘My diamond rings and other jewelry.’ In most cases the jewelry itself has disappeared or, more likely, has suffered the same fate as so many jewels of the past and been reset in unrecognizable forms. We are therefore largely dependent for information concerning it on old records.
One record, dated 1733, contains an inventory of goods belonging to Cesar Ghiselin, evidently a jeweler who actually made jewelry in America. At the time of his death he possessed:
85 pwt. And 10 grs.of gold at 6s. = £25-13-0
24 Gold rings and six links of Gold Buttons = 20-5-8
5 pcs.of Corol = 10-0-0
6 necklaces = 15-0-0
In the course of the next few years records increase. Orders for gold lockets, silver buckles for shoes, and gold ones for girdles and stocks are listed; most frequent of all is the mention of gold buttons. ‘Three dozen Gold Wrought Vest Buttons’ cost one customer over a hundred dollars, but doubtless they served to fasten not only his own vests but after his death the vests of his next of kin, for buttons did not accompany an old garment into the ragbag. They were carefully preserved to be sewed to the new vest or coat.
Much of the Colonial metalwork was patterned after that made in France. One treasured gold girdle buckle of 1752 is embellished with shellwork and scrolls in the true rococo fashion of the period. However, it was not France alone that set the fashions of Colonial American jewelry. For example, colonists had followed the English custom of distributing gifts at a funeral. Gloves, scarves (said to be a length of cloth sufficient to make a shirt) and memorial rings. These particular gifts had early become the customary and expected consolations to mourners.
Rings, to be worn in token of respectful and affectionate memory of the dead, are in some degree understandable, but gloves (several pairs) and scarves seem curiously irrelevant.
With unconscious humor, Mr Pepys in his innocently candid diary gives us the English version of the custom; and on this side of the water, Judge Samuel Sewall of Boston, who likewise kept a diary, was equally literal minded concerning profits to be gained from the thrifty practice of attending funerals. His entries are eminently matter-of-fact.
Novermber 12, 1687. Mrs Eliza Scoffin is intombed. Rings given at the house after coming from the grave.
July 15, 1698. John Ive—a very debauched atheistical man—buried today. I was not at his funeral—Had Gloves sent me—I staid at home and by that means lost a ring—but hope had no loss.
The good judge writes a list of thirty-one funerals at which he has been a bearer, but only thirteen funerals yielded him rings, gloves and scarves. The rest nothing better than scarves, or scarves and gloves. Very inadequate returns he seems to have thought them.
Judge Sewall should have been born later, for the custom of giving funeral rings grew to such extravagant proportions that finally, here as well as in England, it became necessary to curb it by law.
The New World (continued)
As Colonial America rapidly grew, wealth did indeed come from the land, but not at first in the guise of gold mines. All luxuries and many necessities were shipped from overseas. The arts and crafts of skill, even when and if, practised on American soil, were considered inferior to foreign work. Fine furniture, mirrors, glassware in general, clothing and jewelry were imported for the use of the rich.
In the South especially, the wealthy planter, selling his cotton and indigo abroad, spent money with a free hand, importing for his own use gems, jewelry adn silverplate. Many an old will lists, ‘My diamond rings and other jewelry.’ In most cases the jewelry itself has disappeared or, more likely, has suffered the same fate as so many jewels of the past and been reset in unrecognizable forms. We are therefore largely dependent for information concerning it on old records.
One record, dated 1733, contains an inventory of goods belonging to Cesar Ghiselin, evidently a jeweler who actually made jewelry in America. At the time of his death he possessed:
85 pwt. And 10 grs.of gold at 6s. = £25-13-0
24 Gold rings and six links of Gold Buttons = 20-5-8
5 pcs.of Corol = 10-0-0
6 necklaces = 15-0-0
In the course of the next few years records increase. Orders for gold lockets, silver buckles for shoes, and gold ones for girdles and stocks are listed; most frequent of all is the mention of gold buttons. ‘Three dozen Gold Wrought Vest Buttons’ cost one customer over a hundred dollars, but doubtless they served to fasten not only his own vests but after his death the vests of his next of kin, for buttons did not accompany an old garment into the ragbag. They were carefully preserved to be sewed to the new vest or coat.
Much of the Colonial metalwork was patterned after that made in France. One treasured gold girdle buckle of 1752 is embellished with shellwork and scrolls in the true rococo fashion of the period. However, it was not France alone that set the fashions of Colonial American jewelry. For example, colonists had followed the English custom of distributing gifts at a funeral. Gloves, scarves (said to be a length of cloth sufficient to make a shirt) and memorial rings. These particular gifts had early become the customary and expected consolations to mourners.
Rings, to be worn in token of respectful and affectionate memory of the dead, are in some degree understandable, but gloves (several pairs) and scarves seem curiously irrelevant.
With unconscious humor, Mr Pepys in his innocently candid diary gives us the English version of the custom; and on this side of the water, Judge Samuel Sewall of Boston, who likewise kept a diary, was equally literal minded concerning profits to be gained from the thrifty practice of attending funerals. His entries are eminently matter-of-fact.
Novermber 12, 1687. Mrs Eliza Scoffin is intombed. Rings given at the house after coming from the grave.
July 15, 1698. John Ive—a very debauched atheistical man—buried today. I was not at his funeral—Had Gloves sent me—I staid at home and by that means lost a ring—but hope had no loss.
The good judge writes a list of thirty-one funerals at which he has been a bearer, but only thirteen funerals yielded him rings, gloves and scarves. The rest nothing better than scarves, or scarves and gloves. Very inadequate returns he seems to have thought them.
Judge Sewall should have been born later, for the custom of giving funeral rings grew to such extravagant proportions that finally, here as well as in England, it became necessary to curb it by law.
The New World (continued)
The Pre-Raphaelites
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The trouble with Rossetti, owing to his teeming, poetic imagination, had been that he had always wanted to paint things ‘out of his head’ a time when his hand and eye needed to be educated by an endeavor to paint truly what was before him. With infinite tact Holman Hunt let him set to work on a romantic subject, the choice of his heart, but he took care that every detail in this imaginative scene should be painted truly and carefully from facts. In Madox Brown’s studio Rossetti had rebelled at painting so prosaic an object as a pot. Holman Hunt led him to paint the same object with delight because it held the symbolical lily needed by his subject. For the first time in his life Rossetti became passionately interested in things, because he had been made to see that they helped him to express his ideas. He borrowed big books from his father and window curtains from his parents’ house in Charlotte Street. His sister Christina sat for the Virgin, and his mother for St Anne. He borrowed a child’s nightgown and painted that on a small lay-figure, which probably explains why the figure of the little angel is not so convincing as the head; but when we remember that Rossetti was painting every object in the picture for the very first time we are compelled to stop fault-finding to marvel at the wonder of his achievement.
‘Rienzi’ and ‘Lorenzo and Isabella’ were exhibited in the Academy of 1849; ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin’ in the Hyde Park Gallery known as the ‘Free Exhibition’; but somewhat to the disappointment of their authors they attracted very little public attention. Even the ‘P.R.B’ after Rossetti’s signature on his picture appears to have escaped comment. Undismayed, if a trifle disappointed, the young revolutionaries set about more vigorous propaganda by means of new pictures, and a periodical, The Germ, in which they could ventilate their opinions and doctrines.
It was with the idea of writing a journal for this magazine that during the summer Hunt and Rossetti made a tour in France and Belgium, and this journal was duly written, though later it was considered too personal to be published in The Germ. In their judgments of the pictures they saw abroad the young artists were terribly severe. Van Eyck and the early Flemings they admired intensely, but the works of the later painters from Rembrandt to Rubens were dismissed in two words as ‘filthy slosh’.
After what they had seen abroad they held more firmly than ever before that it was not enough for a picture to be correctly drawn and well painted, it must also enshrine a worthy idea. In accordance with this doctrine, now added to the rules of the Brotherhood, Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti all chose serious subjects for the pictures they intended to exhibit in 1850. Hunt painted ‘An Early Christian Missionary escaping from Druids,’ Millais his famous ‘Christ in the House of His Parents,’ and Rossetti ‘The Annunciation’ or ‘Ecce Ancilla Domini’ as it was originally called. Curiously enough Rossetti, who in the previous year had been the most, was now the least Pre-Raphaelite of the three. His strangely beautiful work is not a vision of things seen, but a reverie, the romantic rendering of a mood. Again his sister Christina sat for the Virgin, and Thomas Woolner posed for the head of the Archangel.
Millais, on the other hand, had now thoroughly grasped the principle of Pre-Raphaelitism, and no longer giving a clever imitation of an Italian Primitive, he outdid Hunt himself in the thoroughness with which each detail in his picture was studied from Nature. In order to get absolute truth, Millais took his canvas to a carpenter’s shop to paint the details; he painted the figure of Joseph from the carpenter because that was, he said, ‘the only way to get the development of the muscles right.’ He was not able to get sheep, but he purchased two sheep’s heads from a butcher and painted the flock from them; and it will be observed that the sheep in the picture only show their heads, the bodies being tactfully concealed by wickerwork.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
The trouble with Rossetti, owing to his teeming, poetic imagination, had been that he had always wanted to paint things ‘out of his head’ a time when his hand and eye needed to be educated by an endeavor to paint truly what was before him. With infinite tact Holman Hunt let him set to work on a romantic subject, the choice of his heart, but he took care that every detail in this imaginative scene should be painted truly and carefully from facts. In Madox Brown’s studio Rossetti had rebelled at painting so prosaic an object as a pot. Holman Hunt led him to paint the same object with delight because it held the symbolical lily needed by his subject. For the first time in his life Rossetti became passionately interested in things, because he had been made to see that they helped him to express his ideas. He borrowed big books from his father and window curtains from his parents’ house in Charlotte Street. His sister Christina sat for the Virgin, and his mother for St Anne. He borrowed a child’s nightgown and painted that on a small lay-figure, which probably explains why the figure of the little angel is not so convincing as the head; but when we remember that Rossetti was painting every object in the picture for the very first time we are compelled to stop fault-finding to marvel at the wonder of his achievement.
‘Rienzi’ and ‘Lorenzo and Isabella’ were exhibited in the Academy of 1849; ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin’ in the Hyde Park Gallery known as the ‘Free Exhibition’; but somewhat to the disappointment of their authors they attracted very little public attention. Even the ‘P.R.B’ after Rossetti’s signature on his picture appears to have escaped comment. Undismayed, if a trifle disappointed, the young revolutionaries set about more vigorous propaganda by means of new pictures, and a periodical, The Germ, in which they could ventilate their opinions and doctrines.
It was with the idea of writing a journal for this magazine that during the summer Hunt and Rossetti made a tour in France and Belgium, and this journal was duly written, though later it was considered too personal to be published in The Germ. In their judgments of the pictures they saw abroad the young artists were terribly severe. Van Eyck and the early Flemings they admired intensely, but the works of the later painters from Rembrandt to Rubens were dismissed in two words as ‘filthy slosh’.
After what they had seen abroad they held more firmly than ever before that it was not enough for a picture to be correctly drawn and well painted, it must also enshrine a worthy idea. In accordance with this doctrine, now added to the rules of the Brotherhood, Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti all chose serious subjects for the pictures they intended to exhibit in 1850. Hunt painted ‘An Early Christian Missionary escaping from Druids,’ Millais his famous ‘Christ in the House of His Parents,’ and Rossetti ‘The Annunciation’ or ‘Ecce Ancilla Domini’ as it was originally called. Curiously enough Rossetti, who in the previous year had been the most, was now the least Pre-Raphaelite of the three. His strangely beautiful work is not a vision of things seen, but a reverie, the romantic rendering of a mood. Again his sister Christina sat for the Virgin, and Thomas Woolner posed for the head of the Archangel.
Millais, on the other hand, had now thoroughly grasped the principle of Pre-Raphaelitism, and no longer giving a clever imitation of an Italian Primitive, he outdid Hunt himself in the thoroughness with which each detail in his picture was studied from Nature. In order to get absolute truth, Millais took his canvas to a carpenter’s shop to paint the details; he painted the figure of Joseph from the carpenter because that was, he said, ‘the only way to get the development of the muscles right.’ He was not able to get sheep, but he purchased two sheep’s heads from a butcher and painted the flock from them; and it will be observed that the sheep in the picture only show their heads, the bodies being tactfully concealed by wickerwork.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
State Of The Market
You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out.
- Warren Buffett
- Warren Buffett
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Stunning Design
The construction of Beijing Capital International Airport, Terminal 3 started on March 28, 2004 + it opened for trial operations on February 29, 2008 and will be fully operational on March 26, 2008 + it will also become the largest airport in Asia in land size + one of the worlds' largest in capacity and land size + the designs are stunning with many traditional Chinese elements.
Amazing!
Useful links:
http://en.bcia.com.cn
www.fosterandpartners.com
www.naco.nl
Amazing!
Useful links:
http://en.bcia.com.cn
www.fosterandpartners.com
www.naco.nl
Brook Silva-Braga
Brook Silva-Braga traveled the world for a year + videotaped parts of his experience + produced a documentary of the trip + I wish I could do the same + Bravo!
Useful links:
www.amapforsaturday.com
www.budgettravel.com
Useful links:
www.amapforsaturday.com
www.budgettravel.com
Improv Everywhere
The group Improv Everywhere is really stunning + I thoroughly enjoy their stunts + it's like a work of art + I love it + if I have the time I would volunteer.
Useful link:
http://improveverywhere.com
Useful link:
http://improveverywhere.com
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