- 29 May 09
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Get Ready: Whitney Bedford opening @SVLAP this Saturday
Tomorrow night from 6 to 8pm Whitney Bedford will have her first exhibition with Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.
Tomorrow night from 6 to 8pm Whitney Bedford will have her first exhibition with Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.
While driving back from the East Bay yesterday, I saw this. He seemed okay, and not too concerned about his situation.
The gesso arrived: black, white, beige and burnt umber. Needless to say I am happy happy. My only regret is not getting the earth green—next order. These color option are kind of awesome, and unsurprisingly they are modern solutions to traditional painting—which is what Old Holland does best.
David Ireland, Dirt Work with Flakes, 1974.
I’ve been a fan of his work for a long time. I don’t remember if any of his pieces were up at SFMOMA on my last visit, but often were. Paula Anglim has some of his work here. R.I.P.
My new Moleskine watercolor notebook with a standard size Moleskine notebook on top (which is my first red Moleskine).
Half of my next paintings are going to depict stacks of Moleskine notebooks. Additionally, I am planning on making some works on paper to go along with them. In the past, I have pretty much only worked in my notebooks (Holbein spiral multimedia sketchbooks)—the exception being the white chalk on black paper drawings. So when I received an email advertisement from Moleskine about new products, among them larger books for sketching and watercolors—A4 (8.33 X 11.7″) and A3 (11.7 X 16.5″), I ordered the A3. It is large enough to make 9 X 16 inch works on them. Now all I need is a comically large pen (feather?) with which write at the cafe.
view from the 5th floor gallery, cafe to the left
Today, I went to the SFMOMA—mostly to see the recently opened rooftop sculpture garden. This trip I remembered to bring my camera, but not take it out of my car trunk, so the images within are from my trusty cell phone.
They seemed to maintained the overall size of the 5th floor gallery with the addition of a glass wall overlooking the sculpture garden, but my overall impression is Eh. While it is pleasant enough, there aren’t really any views (note the high walls and its location in back of the museum). The sculptures currently installed are of no interest to me, except for the bronze head of and by Bob Arneson (kind of like this but blackish). His work always makes me smile. Overall the space seems very useable, but not worth a special trip to see it. Probably a good place to have a party.
My two favorite museum roofs are the New Museum and the Pasadena Museum of Art, though in fairness they were intended as vistas and not to display art. The old DIA building in Chelsea was pretty good for both.
Downstairs, in permanent collection, they had a nice Matisse still life I hadn’t seen before—though it could have been up for years. SFMOMA didn’t have an image on their site but I found one on flickr. It is much better in person. The Robert Frank exhibition was good. I think my favorites were from the Black White and Things section of the his exhibition, but I couldn’t find them on the web.
view from the cafe
Based on a Taschen book about the Neue Sachlichkeit, most of the painters from this time made still lives with cactus. I recently completed one myself (six months ago). I was at Home Depot the other day buying a cinder block for a future still and saw that they had larger versions of these grafted cacti. I might have to pick one up.
I am not really sure if a painting will come out of this current batch of images, but for right now I am liking what I am getting. The one below is a bit of photoshop trickery—punching up the levels and saturations, et cetera.
Flora from Robert Olsen on Vimeo.
my most recent attempt at video making.
As my plans got scratched last saturday—much like I Want Revenge in the Kentucky Derby—I suddenly had no plans during the day. So with some free time available, I decided to go down to Laguna Beach to see Roger Kuntz at the Laguna Beach Art Museum. Prior to a recent review by Christopher Knight on the LATimes blog (in print as well I assume), I had never heard of Kuntz or knowingly seen his work. I google mapped the direction on my phone via their website, and it sent me to a private residence. Fortunately getting around Laguna Beach is not difficult and the museum is on the PCH. So after the initial mis-direction, I arrived at the museum. For the most part I thought it was really great, there were a few paintings and most of the sculptures I didn’t know what to do with (a little too Degas’s bather bronzes to my liking). Some of them are products of their times. Mainly the Lunar landscapes of Coors cans, girls and the Goodyear blimp ((all made between 1969 and 1970) there are some sample on this Juxtapoz review).
The works I liked the most, and the bulk of the show, were the variations of the overpasses. I have painted similar subjects, and I am planning to paint some more. It was also interesting how much of this concrete is still around—the catalog has some of his source images that depict places I drive on a regular basis.
In the past seeing something like this would have caused me to drop the idea, but now it makes me want to do it more. It is also why I drove 50+ miles each way to see them. I’ve been thinking about black and white images (greys) in a colorful world. To this end, I have been taking pictures like the one below to this purpose. As soon as the canvases are made, I look forward to starting a few.
The exhibition is open until May 24th. Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach, CA 92651
As far as I know, I had never been to San Diego Museum of Art up until last tuesday. I knew that they had a few paintings I wanted to see. Juan Sánchez Cotán being the main one. He was an influence on one of my favorite painters…
…Zurbarán. They also had a nice little lamb by him. They also had a nice Henri Fantin-Latour.
Adjacent to the San Diego Museum of Art there were also a few gems at the Timken Museum of Art. Among them a nice Pieter Claesz and a John Copley Portrait.
photo via the iPhone (unfortunately).