Piet Dirkx cigarbox 222
Piet Dirkx daily ..222
Piet Dirkx cigarbox 222
Anton Corbijn (1955)
Rightfully world famous now. An excellent photographer and film maker. I am less enthusiastic about his abilities as a designer, but stil his photographs deserve some extra attention by this blog on art. Because these are not only great photographs, but they also reflect music and their performers through the last 4 decades. Bowie, Jagger, Cobain, Davis and of course U2, name them all and all of them have been before the lens of Anton Corbijn.
( all photographs by Anton Corbijn )
Black and white being his favorite way to portray these great artists. As of late he made some movies during the last decade ( the American and A Most wanted man) However, he made his feature film debut with Control, a film about the life of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. It premiered to rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2007. Curtis was a personal friend and it shows in the respectful way he portrayed the singer of Joy Divisison. Because his acquired celebrity status as a photographer, Corbijn has had retrospective exhibitions all over the world and 2 years ago there was a large retrospective on Corbijn in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. Since a few years Corbijn took up the art of design. Personally i do not think he is a strong designer, but this is my personal opinion on his designs. There is a new logo by the Municipality of DEN HAAG which was designed by Corbijn and judge for your self.
Better focus on his photographs….they are very personal, intriguing portraits and they are great!
for some Corbijn titles visit www.ftn-books.com ( stripping girls is made together with Marlene Dumas)
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Piet Dirkx daily ..221
Piet Dirkx cigarbox 221
Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007) ,first retrospective in the Netherlands in April-October 2018
Ettore Sottsass was one of the founding members of the Memphis group in 1981. He made some iconic designs for Alessi and Artemide and now is announced that a large retrospective will be held in the Stedelijk Museum in the April-October period in 2018 Prepare your self for this exhibition and look at the books available on Sottsass at www.ftn-books.com
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Piet Dirkx cigarbox 220
Anton Martineau (1926-2017)
Yesterday, AntonMartineau died. He proclaimed himself the last of a great generation , together with Appel and Lucebert ( personal friends) he became known as an abstract painter, but never belonged to the Cobra movement. Born in the middle of the Red Light district in Amsterdam a fortuneteller told him in his early youth that he would become a painter and a writer. He studied with one of the great designers in these days Paul Schuitema and was successful both as a painter and a writer. www.ftn-books.com has only one title of this fascinating artist available , but it is an important one. It contains both poetry and drawings by this great dutch artist.
The little documentary on Youtube is in dutch , but shows what a wonderful and colorful Martineau was
Piet Dirkx daily ..219
Piet Dirkx cigarbox 219
Marjolein Bastin (1943)
This morning i had a discussion with my wife about the qualities of the illustrations by Marjolein Bastin. Is it art?….NO…are these among the best illustrations one can find on nature and birds….YES. Bastin has become world famous over the years and her works are published all over the world and she even had a Museum presentation in Den Bosch, but this exhibition does not make it art. Specially her series of cards for Hallmark contributed largely to her fame. Her craftsmanship is without a doubt of the highest quality and her subjects appeal to practically all, but because her works have a feminine touch they therefore mostly appeal to women. For me this is not art as i look at art, but i can respect the meaning of others on this subject. What i personally do like about Bastin’s works is her illustrations for children books. Her VERA series is great to read to young children and fascinating to look at and discover the little details in her drawings. Since i discovered that her works are admired and collected all over the world i started to build a large inventory of her classic publications in my store. So there are many Bastin titles available at
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www.ftn-books.com. Please have a look and use for this weekend the discount code BASTIN10 to receive an immediate discount on all your purchases.
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Piet Dirkx cigarbox 218
Mario Merz (1925-2003)
This was the first photograph i encountered on the Net of Mario Merz and i instantly was frightened. Here is an angry man if ever there was one. Mario Merz works are on show in the van Abbemuseum and the Stedelijk Museum and at the time Rudi Fuchs was director of the Haags Gemeentemuseum , there was one work on loan. What struck me at that time was the lightness and transparency of the works. Larger sized and as a work of art these works were changing the rooms in which they were shown and interacting with the space they were presented in. There is a nice example of such a presentation in the Castello de Rivoli in Torino which first exhibitions were also curated by Rudi Fuchs.
These works take time for an art lover to be appreciated, but when you do so. There is no artist equal to Mario Merz and you forget about the “angry” old man in the photographs , but only see the sheer beauty of the works he created.
There ares ome nice examples of Mario Merz catalogues availabel at www.ftn-books.com including the first series of catalogues on the Castello di Rivoli project by Rudi Fuchs.
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