Banksy has once again taken to Instagram to claim his latest work which turned up overnight on a building on York Street near the A20 in Dover, England.
The three-storey high Brexit-themed mural shows a workman chipping away at one of the 12 gold stars of the European Union flag with a hammer and chisel.
The building is located near the Dover ferry port which connects England to the French port of Calais – a cheeky reference perhaps to the French election?
for more
It was the late 50’s and early sixties that a new generation of dutch designers stood up and almost all of them have been of great influence on corporate, furniture and book design all over the world. Kho LIang Ie was one of them. Less known than Sandberg and Crouwel , but still one who’s influence on design is still there. As i understand Pastoe is still making his couch C653, but not only furniture was designed by Kho Lian Ie.
He designed complete exhibitions and ofcourse some beautiful catalogues of which some are available at www.ftn-books.com
To get a good idea of the importance of Kho Liang Ie, visit his website on which is explained in an excellent way the project which he was responsible for and for which he made some great designs. http://www.kholiangie.com
Seven of the items from the above picture are available at www.ftn-books.com
A.R. Penck died 6 days ago i learned today from the Volkskrant newspaper and this brought back memories to the time Penck was invited by Rudi Fuchs to the Gemeentemuseum at the time he had an exhibition in galerie Auerbach in Amsterdam . It must have been somewhere in 1989 and Penck made some paintings on the spot in the museum and opened the exhibition with a drum performance. Because of the Amsterdam exhibition a nice box in a limited edition of only 10 copies was published and it contained 20 original photographs of Penck at “work” an extremely rare box which is nowhere offered, except at www.ftn-books.com ( not shown in te shop / if interested inquire ).
To commemorate Penck i will show the box in this blog and remember the one time we met and were introduced to each other ( although his mind was not clear at the time). Penck one of the last great german artists who made the new figuration famous all over the world.
The books are available at www.ftn-books.com
An important exhibition in KUNSTHAL / Rotterdam. To be shown until the 27th of August there is a large Retrospective on Robert Mapplethorpe, one of the great photographers from last century who died sadly from HIV in 1989.
https://www.kunsthal.nl/nl/plan-je-bezoek/tentoonstellingen/robert-mapplethorpe/
Robert Mapplethorpe ( November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, known for his sensitive yet blunt treatment of controversial subject-matter in the large-scale, highly stylized black and white medium of photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits and still-life images of flowers. His most controversial work is that of the underground BDSM scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s of New York City. The homoeroticism of this work fueled a national debate over the public funding of controversial artwork.
This is the text which Wikipedia uses to describe Mapplethorpe in a nutshell, but what is less known is that Mapplethorpe exhibitions were held in the Netherlands at a very early stage of his career in galerie Jurka. His earliest exhibition over there was in 1979, well before his works were collected and appreciated by many.
“Robert Mapplethorpe: 1970-75,” Robert Samuel Gallery, New York
Texas Gallery, Houston, Texas
“Contact,” Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Galerie Jurka, Amsterdam
“Trade Off,” International Center of Photography, New Y
La Remise du Parc Gallery, Paris
“Film and Stills,” Robert Miller Gallery, New York
The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia
Langton Street Gallery, San Francisco, California
Simon Lowinsky Gallery, San Francisco, California
La Remise du Parc Gallery, Paris
Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California
“Portraits,”Holly Solomon Gallery, New York
“Flowers,” Holly Solomon Gallery, New York
“Erotic Pictures,” The Kitchen, New York
“Polaroids,”Light Gallery, New York
This exhibition means his photographs will come back to the Netherlands and one can see for himself what development and progression Mapplethorpe has made since his first exhibitions over here. And yes… the Jurka catalogue from 1980 is available at www.ftn-books.com
Personally I find it an art form which is hard to understand, but sometimes there are Video installations which i appreciate. For instance the Erszebet Baerveldt ..Requiem is one of the most fascinating video’s i know ( search it on Youtube). Gary Hill’s video’s are more direct. In many cases filmed at close range with an intriguing voice over make these video’s very direct. They are not beautiful but highly intriguing and once you have seen them you will remember them.
It is not easy to find publications on Gary Hill and even more …is a book a suitable medium to promote a video artist?..i do not think so, but what makes the publications on Gary Hill i have at www.ftn-books.com worthwhile is the way these are published and designed. Great collectable books on a great video artist.
Born in Ukrainia in 1933, he later immigrated in 1987 to Graz in Austria and after that he became an American citizen and moved to New York. Since 1987 his works /installations are executed by him and his niece Emilia, whi=o would later become his wife. Kabakov s considered to be one of the foremost installation/conceptual artists in the world and because of this status his works were presented and collected by the Stedelijk Museum. Many publications, including HET GROTE ARCHIEF,
are still within in the collection, but rarely exhibited. Kabakov is one of those artists who are lesser known with the great public, but who works will become more and more important in the years to come. What his works make for me more interesting is the beautiful books which and catalogues which are published with his exhibitions and 2 of them are for sale at www.ftn-books.com
Annie Leibovitz rose to fame when she published her first photographs in Rolling Stone Magazine. It was there that she met many of the artists who later asked and commissioned her to photograph the covers and inner sleeves for their albums. John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Joan Armatrading, the Rolling Stones and Whoopi Goldberg, all of them asked her to make their photographs and many of these became world famous. Later on in her career she made some unfortunate financial choices and was left with a substantial debt of over 15 million.
In February 2009, Leibovitz borrowed US$15.5 million, after having experienced financial challenges, putting up several houses as well as the rights to all of her photographs as collateral. The New York Times noted that “one of the world’s most successful photographers essentially pawned every snap of the shutter she had made or will make until the loans are paid off,”[and that, despite a US$50 million archive, Leibovitz had a “long history of less than careful financial dealings” and “a recent series of personal issues” including the loss of her parents and the 2004 death of Sontag, as well as the addition of two children to her family, and controversial renovation of three Greenwich Village properties.
This overshadowed her carreer,in the last decade, but since 2010, her financial situation bettered with the help of Colony Capital. Leibovitz can now breath again freely and do what she is great in doing….making iconic photographs like the ones above. www.ftn-books.com has some publications on Leibovitz available at this moment.
Wim Beeren was the first curator /director of the Stedelijk Museum who bought for the collection of the SM a Walter de Maria. Others in the Netherlands, ao the Museum Boymans van Beuningen, would follow, but still there are not many works by de Maria to be found in dutch collections. Probably the main reason is not their appeal, but these works are hard to collect because of their sheer size and complexity. They need space….. a lot of space……
Complete rooms or even outside spaces have to be dedicated to one work ( see lightning field, de Maria’s most famous work) and that is for many Museums and collectors the main reason not to include a de Maria. Still whenever there is a retrospective in a museum, visitors are impressed and one can easily see why. Look at the video and get a nice impression of his qualities of his form of LAND ART.
https://youtu.be/Vpw_UC7sUN0
and of course visit www.ftn-books.com for some nice publications.
Sonia Delaunay… I always thought she was french, but she lived in France because she married Robert Delaunay, but was born in Ukrainia. She became known as the cofounder of the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colors and geometric shapes. Her work extends to painting, textile design and stage set design. She was the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in 1964.
In short she was one of the first female modern artists to became known all over the world. Her patterns, tissues and paintings have been of influence to many modern artists after her, including the hard edge and kinetic artists who combined her use of colors and patterns into their own works of art. Art Deco fashion could not have existed without Delaunay tissues she had fabricated for her costumes.
A fascinating artist who’s patterns and paintings look still very modern and one of those artists who made her publications very special by using serigraphs, lithographs and pochoir prints as a cover. Making these publications stand out from the others and turning them into very desirable collectable items. There are a few available at www.ftn-books.com
People who follow this blog know of my admiration for Minimal Art and for me Minimal Art includes the work by Robert Ryman. I hesitated to start with this sentence because many believe Robert Ryman is not a Minimal painter but more of a painter who makes monochrome works of art. Still ,when searching on Google for Ryman he is by many categorized as “Minimal”.
Often allied with Minimalist, Conceptual Art, and Monochrome Painting, Robert Ryman has painted works in which theme and medium are one. A majority of his paintings feature only white or off-white paint on square canvases, varying in scale and texture and draw the eye toward the nature of the brush strokes and the depth of paint. To further heighten the effect of subtle variations in technique, Ryman manipulates how each work is hung on the wall, playing with the frames themselves as well as with each painting’s distance from the wall. For example, the eleven-panel Vector (1975/1997) comprises 11 wood units of the same size painted in white and hung equidistant from one another, the empty spaces on the walls between the panels echoing the nuanced texture and forms of the panels themselves. A great painter and one of the last from his generation of Minimal artists. www.ftn-books.com has some nice publications on Ryman available.
