Henri Fantin-Latour// still lives

You may recognize Henri Fantin-Latour's flourish for painting florals from New Order's Power, Corruption, Lies album cover, designed by Peter Saville. The details in the flowers and fruit are so subtle and delicate. 'Sumptuous'would be a fantastic word to describe his painting style. The fresh fruits and flowers seem distinctively "un-winter"; it's quite refreshing to rest my eyes on something with life and colour.

Flores de Verão e Frutos (1866)

The Betrothal Still Life (1869) oil on canvas

Paintings by Theodora Allen

Theodora Allen is a painter from Los Angeles. She tends to paint primarily with oil on linen. Low contrast washes with faded outlines on her still lives and faces make her paintings have a dreamlike quality. Little specks of light scattered across her images are like constellations. She often posts works that aren't yet on her website to the Lula magazine online scrapbook.

The Rain and the Shine Is Yours, Is Mine, 2013, oil on linen, 18" x 24"

Sister Moon, I Am Your Sun, 2013, oil on linen, 16" x 16"

Ace of Cups, dimensions unknown, oil on linen

ROCK SHOW

As you can see, I've depicted ALL the people you'd love to encounter at a festival.
#Coachella #StreetStyle

christiane f.// We Children from Bahnhof Zoo

I watched Christiane F. last night and I can't believe I waited so long to do so. The movie tells the story of Christiane, a 13 year old girl and her downward spiral into the drug scene in West Berlin.
Christiane is brought to a teen disco by a friend, and there has her first "trip." It seems as though she takes her first pills even before she tries drinking because she orders cherry juice at the bar. David Bowie is playing and the colored lights of the disco are bright and optimistic. But at 138 minutes, this film has plenty of time to devolve to the zombie-like heroin addict Christiane becomes by the end. Right after she snorts H for the first time, the David Bowie soundtrack cuts out, replaced by menacing orchestral sounds similar to the Trans Siberian Orchestra's The Shining soundtrack. Director Uli Edel seemed to pay special attention that drug use not be glamourized in Christiane F.. 

lit with skittles// thoughts on lighting

Harmony Korine wanted Spring Breakers to look as though it were "lit with skittles." Lights in clubs, lights from the city that cast onto motels and suburban homes, lights from the windows of stores and corner stores that gaze onto the people looking in, lights from a rock show that make the skin and hair of the musician change from blues to pinks...
Painters Jenny Morgan and Jen Mann paint their subjects in monochromatic hues that make them appear to be lit with colored bulbs. Casting colored light onto a subject- whether painted, filmed, photographed- captures the illusion of the skin becoming a reflective surface for the surrounding environment. Like diffusing a Manic Panic tint onto an image that makes skin appear to concisely consist of varying tints, shades, and saturations of one color.

Spring// J.C. Leyendecker

"

"Spring" J.C. Leyendecker, 1929

Wayne Thiebaud's oil paintings of treats

Four Ice-Cream-Cones, oil on canvas, 1964, Oil on canvas, 14 x 16

Milkshake & Sandwiches, 2000, oil on canvas, 15 3/4 x 20


Cakes 1963

Jen Mann// "Bubblegum"

Jen Mann Bubble Gum- 72”x60” oil on canvas

Toronto artist Jen Mann graduated from OCAD! She just had a solo show entitled "Strange Beauties" featuring this painting above, along with many more monochromatic pieces you can check out here.

japan in the 60s

Speaking of polaroids, look at these ones from Betsy's blog Young Doe Old Crow. They capture perfectly the wistful feelings of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood; a novel I'm currently reading set in 1960s Japan. Murakami takes great care in describing each setting, from the light streaming in through the window to how each item of food on the dinner table was prepared. These photos seem to posess the delicately lit mood I pulled from the trailer for the movie adaptation (which I will put off seeing until I finish the book..). Go to Betsy's blog and find more 60s/70s polaroids from her dad's travels.

Caitlin Doherty// polaroid style paintings

Caitlin Doherty L.A.


*More here

night lights

Homer Watson "Rushing Stream by Moonlight" 1905


AY Jackson "Moonlight, Baie St. Paul" 1924 (oil on panel)


A Y Jackson"Moonlight Sainte Anne de Beaupre" 1925

Indian Church// Emily Carr

_{Indian Church 1929, Emily Carr}

Girl in a Fur Coat// Lucian Freud

_{Girl in a Fur Coat, Lucian Freud, 1967}

I bet that this painting was an inspiration for Marc Jacobs' Fall 2010 collection; the fur collar, mussed hair, the color palette...look.

Allison Schulnik "Mound" + Scott Walker

Allison Schulnik's "Mound" video was shown during illustration class today. Right when it started I recognized the musical accompaniment to be Scott Walker. It's Raining Todaywas a song that I'd hear at home all the time as a kid. The song reminds me of the blue hour, cold nights before the new year, walking alone...it's a song that would make me feel scared and spooked out. I also seem to associate the mood of this song to Christmastime. 

It made me very excited that Allison Schulnik chose this song to make a video for. Her clay figures that are constantly morphing; growing collections of little holes and smears of rainbows, make for the perfect visual to the haunting sound of It's Raining Today.

Arnaud Maggs//photographer

Arnaud Magg's way of observing the world is very interesting. I saw some of his portaits and journals at the National Art Gallery this past summer when I went there to go see the Van Gogh exhbition, but to be honest, I was much more excited about seeing Magg's work. 

Pages from "Werner's Nomenclature of Colours" were displayed along with his works. The pages show records of environments that corresponded with a color swatch. Details of what it was and where he found it were also written down.

In Arnaud Maggs' photography series, the subjects are shot head on, then with their head turned to the side. What I found very interesting was how different a perspective you get of someone's face when you observe it at different angle. The change in facial features from one shot to the next made the same person look like two different people. It also helped that this was the first time I'd ever seen the faces of the subjects...it brings up the idea of how a 2D image cannot fully represent the character of someone's face...it flattens it. In visual art, the idea of single-perspective observation is interesting, especially when doing a self-portrait. Evan Penny's (at the AGO now!) distored sculptures show exactly how single perspective observation while working with a 3D medium can really flatten the face; creating shallow depth.



Arnaud Maggs passed away this week, which is what made me want to write a bit of a comemmoration.

Life in a glass house

Jeremy Miranda "Greenhouse at Night"Jeremy Miranda "A Frame"

Rachel Whiteread "Ghost Ghost" (2008)

Todd Hido photography

∆s are my favourite shape

Triangles are my favourite shape// three points where two lines meet

시간에(의) 직면, Face the whole(Martini) - Daehyun Kim

Go to moonassi.com and look at the rest of Daehyum Kim's other works...they're all equally black & white. The duo-tone drawings are really inspiring. It reminds me of Thom Yorke's solo album covers, or like that one Fever Ray album cover. Woodblock carving, then printing with ink or scratching into clayboard would be a lot of fun to create duo-tone drawings like these. 

Mark Rothko\ Green Over Blue

"There is no such thing as good painting about nothing." - Mark Rothko

Green Over Blue 1956

j.e.h. macdonald\ radiohead 'hail to the thief'

      Here are some fall scenes by J.E.H. MacDonald. There are some at the AGO and at the National Gallery. These paintings make me want to walk in the woods in the fall on an overcast day. This reminds me of when I was obsessed with Hail to the Thief (click to listen) by Radiohead and thought that it was the perfect soundtrack to walking in a forest in the fall when everything seems slightly creepy, like the sunny golden forest in the Blair Witch project*.

October Shower Gleam 1922

Algoma Swamp 1919

 

*I Find myself referencing this movie more than any other movie lately. I'm wondering why. 

Fall morning colours, AY Jackson

How the shadows are painted is incredible. This gold light is the light that I see coming through the blinds right now. This painting is on display at the National Art Gallery if you're interested in seeing it, for those of you in Ottawa.

AY Jackson Edge of the Maple Wood (1910)